Since the dawn of the earliest biosphere, the preponderance of Earth's biodiversity has resided in the myriad simple forms known as prokaryotes.  Out of the ancient ecological assemblages of interacting and coevolving prokaryotes arose all of the eukaryote lineages that have ever existed.

The simplest eukaryotes have long been collectively referred to as "protists."  In the past three decades biologists have come to understand that the diverse assemblage of eukaryotic organisms, including all of the protists, is divisible into six discrete "crown eukaryote" lineages: metazoans (animals), plants (in the strict sense), fungi, stramenopiles (mostly oomycetes and chromophytes), alveolates (mostly ciliates), and rhodophytes (red algae), as well as a plethora of idiosyncratic ancient lineages, such as assorted amoebae,     euglenids and slime molds, that don't clearly belong to any of those lineages.

Every eukaryote is a chimeric assemblage of ancient prokaryotes and parts of prokaryotic genomes, and many are composites of simpler eukaryotes that are intimately and inextricably interacting as a symbiotic whole. The evidence supporting that profound reinterpretation of biodiversity is overwhelming, and leaves little doubt that in the late Twentieth Century biologists uncovered a fundamental truth about life on Earth.  In this course we focus on this recent and revolutionary understanding of eukaryote diversity through an examination of the evidence that supports it.

Traditionally, "algae" has referred to all photosynthetic organisms that are not Land Plants (embryophytes).  As we shall learn, the "algae" includes a diverse array of prokaryotes (bluegreen algae or cyanobacteria), plants, alveolates, stramenopiles, and rhodophytes, as well as a bizarre host of those primitive eukaryotes not included in the crown eukaryote groups. We shall find that some of the most potent toxins known are produced in abundance by algae, and that one of the most deadly diseases afflicting humans, malaria, is caused by an organism descended from algae. We will find that they inhabit some of the hottest and some of the coldest places on earth. We will see how algae play a central role in major biogeochemical cycles and how they form the basis for the food chain in the largest ecosystems on earth.

We shall learn that the group of organisms traditionally referred to as "fungi" includes not only the true fungi, a remarkably diverse group in it's own right, but a variety of other heterotrophic non-animals as well.  Phycomycetes, long thought to be fungi, are now known to be mostly stramenopiles, more closely related to kelps than to fungi.  Myxomycetes, or slime molds, are primitive eukaryotes of uncertain affinity, but clearly unrelated to any of the crown eukaryote groups.  True fungi are, in fact, much more closely related to animals than they are to any other group of eukaryotes.

The study of algae and fungi reveals some of the deepest secrets of the remote evolutionary past.  As we enter the realm of cryptic evidence for distant evolutionary events, be prepared to entertain the subtle and often obscure details of ultrastructure, molecular structure and cellular processes that together provide us the big picture of how it all came to be.

Meetings: Bi 332 will meet in SC 214 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9:00 until 9:50 AM. Laboratory sessions meet Thursdays from 9:00 until 11:50 AM.
 

Primary Reading:

L. E. Graham and L. W. Wilcox 2000. Algae. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

W. Purvis 2000. Lichens. Smithsonian Institution Press

B. Kendrick 2001. The Fifth Kingdom. Focus Publishing/R. Pullens Co.

Lichen Resources:

Northwest Lichenologists

California Lichen Society

Checklist of Lichen-forming Fungi of the Continental U.S. and Canada

Lichens of North America

Key to Lichens Genera in the Pacific Northwest

Key to Crustose Lichens of California

Epiphytes and Forest Management

Listed Lichens West of the Cascade Crest

Key to the genus Caloplaca

Lichens of British Columbia: Foliose and Squamulose Species

Lichens of British Columbia: Fruticose Species

Parmeliaceae: A Searchable Database of Names, Smithsonian Institute

Lichen Identification Guide

Lichen Literature