Arthonia atlantica

Key Details

Taxonomic Groups: Fungus or lichen > lichen > Lichen
Red List Status: Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(nr)]
D5 Status: Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022)
Section 41 Status: (not listed)
Taxa Included Synonym: (none)
UKSI Recommended Name: Reichlingia dendritica
UKSI Recommended Authority: (Leight.) Ertz & Sanderson
UKSI Recommended Qualifier: (none specified)
Red List Citation: Woods & Coppins, 2012
Notes on taxonomy/listing: (none)

Criteria

Question 1: Does species need conservation or recovery in England?
Response: Yes
Justification: Very rare, with few sites known, possibly initially parasitic on Arthonia ilicina
Question 2: Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions?
Response: Yes
Justification: Key evidence gaps exist concerning its current status, threats and remedial measures. Need to understand reasons for decline and best action moving forward.
Question 3: At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages?
Response: Yes
Justification: Part of a large group of species threatened by under grazing of old growth woodlands

Species Assessment

Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Recovery potential/expectation: Medium-high
National Monitoring Resource: Opportunistic - insufficient
Species Comments: Healthy populations require extensively grazed minimum intervention pasture woodland, restoring grazing to woodlands is difficult and opposed by some policies.

Key Actions

Key Action 1

Proposed Action: Produce a species dossier to collate information on current and historic sites, including results of surveys and assessment of threats and remedial actions.

Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood

Action type: Scientific research

Duration: 1 year

Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites

High priority sites:

Comments:

Key Action 2

Proposed Action: Survey sites with no recent information (identified through A1) to update status assessments, identify habitat management issues and actions required to address them.

Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified

Action type: Status survey/review

Duration: 3-5 years

Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites

High priority sites:

Comments:

Key Action 3

Proposed Action: Advise and support site owners and managers to implement the site-level actions identifies in A1.

Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales

Action type: Advice & support

Duration: 6-10 years

Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites

High priority sites:

Comments: Positive impacts on many threatened lichen species. Potential to bundle this with other grazing dependant woodland species.

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Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.