Pier Luigi Nimis | |
|---|---|
 Nimis in August 2004 | |
| Born | 1953 |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Alma mater | University of Trieste |
| Awards | Acharius Medal |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Trieste |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Nimis |
Pier Luigi Nimis is a senior professor of botany (retired in 2023) at the University of Trieste in Italy. He specialises in lichenology and phytogeography, including the uses of lichens as indicators of pollution and devising methods for web-based identification keys.
Pier Luigi Nimis was the first of two boys, grown up in the small home town of Tarcento in Friuli (NE Italy). His father, Carlo, was an Alpine soldier who survived the Russian expedition of WW2, returned on foot, and became a prosperous baker; his mother, Matilde, was a popular teacher who taught whole generations of young people. Fascinated from a young age by insects, the young Nimis built a remarkable collection of more than 10.000 specimens from the surroundings of his village, which, however, was swept away by the 1976 Friuli earthquake. Nimis studied at the Liceo Classico Jacopo Stellini in Udine, after which he went to the University of Trieste, where he worked on a thesis on the thorny-cushions vegetation of the high Mediterranean mountains under the mentorship of Sandro Pignatti. A post-doc research at University of Western Ontario (Canada), devoted to the vegetation of the Alaska Highway, tutored by László Orlóci, let him discover the world of lichens, whose study he later pursued with his Master and friend Josef Poelt. [1]
After his doctorate, Nimis became a member of staff at the University of Trieste and by 1986 he was Professor of Systematic Botany. He has since also held several administrative posts such as the chair of the School of Biological Sciences from 1988 to 1994, Director of the Department of Biology from 1996 to 2001, and Dean of the Doctoral School of Biomonitoring from 2009 until 2011. [2]
Nimis's research was initially on phytogeography and methods for the joint mapping of plant distribution ranges with multivariate methods, mainly in the Boreal [3] and Arctic zones. [4] The approach developed by Nimis was inspired by the "Method of the Equiformal Progressive Areas" by Eric Hultén, i.e. the joint mapping of species with similar distribution patterns, [5] differing in the introduction of multivariate statistics in the classification of both vegetation data and the distribution ranges of species by multivariate analysis. [4]
Later he began to concentrate on lichens, including their identification and role as indicators of atmospheric pollution. [6] After the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 he led programmes to map and monitor levels of radioactive caesium in macrofungi, forest plants and mosses in Italy. [2] He extended his research to the use of lichens to monitor air pollution, proposing guidelines for their use as bioindicators and bioaccumulators, and demonstrating a correlation between lung cancer and air pollution by mapping human mortality and lichen biodiversity in the Veneto region of Italy. [7] Nimis was also the co-leader of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop in Wales in 2000 that brought together an international group of researchers working on lichens and air pollution and led to the publication of Monitoring with Lichens – Monitoring Lichens in 2002. He also published several papers on lichens as agents of biodeterioration processes on stone, suggesting best-practices to deal with lichen growth on monuments. [8]
His publication in 1993 of a comprehensive catalogue of 2145 infrageneric taxa of lichens found in Italy, followed by an updated version in 2016, are considered significant landmarks in scholarship and thoroughness, and are of value for their descriptions and feature keys of lichens beyond the Italian region. [9]
Nimis's research has also included collaborations on checklists of the lichen biodiversity of the Alps, the Mediterranean and Antarctic regions, as well as development since the 1990s of web-based identification keys that have been applied to several groups of organisms and developed into the KeyToNature mobile apps from 2015. [2] [10] Presently, Nimis is working on a computer-aided key to all lichens hitherto known from Italy and neighbouring countries, whose publication in paper-form is foreseen for 2026. [11] The keys are being published online in the site of ITALIC, the information system on Italian lichens. [12]
From 1987 until 1993 Nimis was president of the Italian Lichen Society, as well as one of its founders; editor-in-chief of the International Lichenological Newsletter (1997-2000), he was president of the International Association for Lichenology from 2000 until 2004. [13] In 1993 he was awarded the OPTIMA Silver Medal for the best book on the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area published in the preceding three years, [14] the International Ferrari-Soave Prize for Biology from the Academy of Sciences of Turin in 2009, and the Acharius Medal in 2014. [15]
Three genera and eight species have been named to honour Nimis: Nimisia Kärnefelt & A. Thell (1993), Nimisiostella Calat., Barreno & O.E. Erikss. (1997), Nimisora Pérez-Ort., M. Svenss. & J. C. Zamora (2023); Rinodina nimisii Giralt & H. Mayrhofer (1995), Topelia nimisiana Tretiach & Vězda (1992), [16] Sphaerellothecium nimisii Brackel & Puntillo (2023)., [17] Sarcogyne nimisii K.Knudsen, Kocourk. & Hodková (2023), [18] Circinaria nimisii Sohrabi, H. Mayrhofer, Obermayer & S.D. Leav. (2023), Coenogonium nimisii Malíček & Sanderson (2023), Tremella nimisiana Freire-Rallo, Diederich, Millanes & Wedin (2023), and Xanthoparmelia nimisii Barcenas-Peña, Lumbsch & Grewe (2023) [19]
Nimis is the author or co-author of several books and over 300 scientific publications.
The books include:
His scientific publications include:
Lichenology is the branch of mycology that studies the lichens, symbiotic organisms made up of an intimate symbiotic association of a microscopic alga with a filamentous fungus. Lichens are chiefly characterized by this symbiosis.
Chicita Frances Culberson was an American lichenologist.
Maria Cengia Sambo was an Italian botanist, specializing in lichenology. Her work in the early twentieth century on the nature of the lichen symbiosis along with collection of many specimens and records of lichen distributions was particularly significant.
Peter Crittenden is a British lichenologist. His research largely concerns the ecophysiology of lichens. Crittenden is known for using new techniques to study lichens, such as the use of 3D printing and X-ray computed tomography to study lichen structure and development. He served as the senior editor of the scientific journal The Lichenologist from the years 2000–2016; and still serves on the editorial board for the journal Fungal Ecology. Crittenden was the president of the British Lichen Society in 1998–1999, and president of the International Association for Lichenology from 2008 to 2012. He was awarded the Acharius Medal at the 10th International Mycological Congress in Bangkok in 2014, for his lifetime achievements in lichenology.
Antonio Jatta was an Italian politician and lichenologist. After completing his secondary studies at the Classical Lyceum Umberto I in Naples, at the age of 22 he graduated with honours in natural history at the University of Naples and in agriculture at the Royal Higher School of Agriculture in Portici. Already at that time he distributed an exsiccata-like work under the title Lichenes Italiae Meridionalis exsiccati. He was a wealthy landowner who published Flora Italica Cryptogama in several volumes from 1900 to 1909. Jatta identified the lichens that were given in the 1915 list of the lichens of the Maltese Islands, compiled by the botanists Carlo Pietro Stefano Sommier and Alfredo Caruana Gatto. A 1962 publication by William Culberson noted that most of his subgeneric names from the Flora Italica Cryptogama had not been included in Alexander Zahlbruckner's influential 10-volume work Catalog Lichenum Universalis (1922–1940), nor in Elke Mackenzie's 1963 followup work Index Nominum Lichenum. Culberson catalogued 467 of Jatta's names to avoid the future publication of "superfluous or otherwise illegitimate names".
Ruggero Tomaselli was an Italian botanist. He introduced the study of phytosociology to Italy.
Helmut Mayrhofer is an Austrian lichenologist. He is known for his expertise on the lichen family Physciaceae and his studies of the lichen flora of the Balkan Peninsula, the Alps, and other regions.
Parmelia barrenoae is a species of foliose lichen in the large family Parmeliaceae. It was formally described as a new species in 2005. Before this, it was lumped together as one of several lichens in the Parmelia sulcata group—a species complex of genetically distinct lookalikes. Parmelia barrenoae is widely distributed, occurring in Europe, western North America, Africa, and Asia.
Pseudosagedia is a genus of corticolous (bark-dwelling) lichens in the family Porinaceae. It was first circumscribed as a section of genus Arthopyrenia by Swiss botanist Johannes Müller Argoviensis in 1862. Maurice Choisy elevated it to distinct generic status in 1949. Pseudosagedia was little used until, in 1995, Josef Hafellner and Klaus Kalb resurrected the genus to contain members of the Porina nitidula species group with the perithecial pigment called Pseudosagedia-violet and lacking setae.
Thelenellaceae is a family of lichen-forming fungi. It is the sole family in the monotypic order Thelenellales, and contains three genera and about 50 species.
Josef Poelt was a botanist, bryologist and lichenologist. He held the chair in Systematic Botany and Plant Geography at the Free University of Berlin and then was head of the Botanical Institute and Botanical Garden of Graz University, Austria.
Verrucula arnoldaria is a rare species of lichenicolous (lichen-dwelling) lichen in the family Verrucariaceae. It grows parasitically on the thallus of the rock-dwelling, crustose lichen Calogaya arnoldii. The species was formally described as new to science in 2007 by lichenologists Père Navarro-Rosinés and Claude Roux, from specimens collected in Vaucluse, France. It has also been recorded from Italy. The lichen has a thick brownish-grey, areolate thallus that roughly maintains the shape of its underlying host. The thallus is covered with a crystalline pruina. It makes ellipsoid spores that measure up to about 15 μm long. Its host grows on calciferous rocks and calciferous schists.
Maronella is a genus of lichens of uncertain familial and ordinal placement in the class Lecanoromycetes. The genus was circumscribed in 1959 by German lichenologist and lichen chemist Maximilian Steiner with Maronella laricina assigned as the type, and at that time, only species. This lichen is rare, having only been recorded from Austria and Spain. M. coreana, known only from type collection in South Korea, was added to the genus in 2015. Both species grow on bark and have a crust-like thallus.
Diromma is a monotypic fungal genus in the family Roccellaceae. It contains the single species Diromma dirinellum, a rare crustose lichen that grows as a parasite on the lichen Dirina ceratoniae. It has a distribution restricted to the Mediterranean Basin.
Erichansenia epithallina is a species of saxicolous (rock-dwelling), crustose lichen in the family Teloschistaceae. It is also a lichenicolous lichen species, meaning that it grows on other lichens. Many host genera have been recorded. It occurs in Europe and North America, including Arctic regions.
Kuettlingeria erythrocarpa is a species of saxicolous (rock-dwelling), crustose lichen in the family Teloschistaceae.
Flavoplaca limonia is a species of saxicolous (rock-dwelling), crustose lichen in the family Teloschistaceae. It was first formally described as a new species in 1994 by lichenologists Pier Luigi Nimis and Josef Poelt. Ulf Arup and colleagues transferred the taxon to the genus Flavoplaca in 2013, following a molecular phylogenetics-based restructuring of the family Teloschistaceae.
Caloplaca rinodinae-albae is a lichenicolous (lichen-dwelling) species of crustose lichen in the family Teloschistaceae, first described in 1987. This species is unique for its parasitic growth on the lichen Helmutiopsis alba. Characteristics of the lichen include its small, rounded, pale orange thalli and its ability to form larger patches through the confluence of individual thalli.
Enchylium limosum, commonly known as lime-loving tarpaper lichen, is a species of crustose to subfoliose lichen in the family Collemataceae. This unique lichen species possesses a gelatinous thallus with a dark coloration, contributing to its distinctive appearance. It thrives in a diverse array of habitats spanning temperate to boreal-montane regions, across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia.
Melanolecia is a fungal genus in the family Lecideaceae. It contains the single species Melanolecia transitoria, a saxicolous (rock-dwelling) crustose lichen.
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