Richard Droker wrote:
Very interesting idea of Roger’s which bears further looking into. Shirt sleeves would seem to be good for static electricity. (Something very infuriating for me is how slices of apothecia tend to fly off before I can get them to the water on a slide.)
Roger also mentions the seeds’ rugged surface. Ascospores of Thelomma have “ornamentation: minute to coarse, consisting of irregular ridges, faint parallel ridges or irregular cracks” (Tibell and Ryan 2004 in Nash et.al (eds) Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region, Volume 2). Does this promote epizoochory? Touching a mazaedium produces streaks of spores - https://www.flickr.com/photos/29750062@N06/5127487912/in/photolist
Sidetracked from things I should be doing (I blame Craig). Instead looking at things like http://apbrwww5.apsu.edu/thompsonj/Evolution/types_of_seed_dispersal.htm which has many related terms. Anemochory and ballochory would apply to most lichen fungi. Also of interest are endozoochory, particularly malacochory (https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2429655/2010-02_Johan%20Asplund_(INA).pdf?sequence=1), ornithochory and anthropochory.
Interesting shot of the spore streaks Richard. Skin, whether dry or oily, is very high (positively charged) in the triboelectric series. The wider the divide in the series, the greater the triboelectric effect when the materials come in contact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Triboelectric_series
On the roughness, Wiki says, "For surfaces with differing geometry, rubbing may also lead to heating of protrusions, causing pyroelectric charge separation which may add to the existing contact electrification, or which may oppose the existing polarity. Surface nano-effects are not well understood, and the atomic force microscope has enabled rapid progress in this field of physics."
They also say, "When separated, some of the bonded atoms have a tendency to keep extra electrons, and some a tendency to give them away, though the imbalance will be partially destroyed by tunneling or electrical breakdown (usually corona discharge)." So, I wonder if a way to investigate if seeds or lichen propagules acquire a charge when they separate from the parent, would be to look for coronae during the separation?
Gonna take someone far more knowledgeable and better equipped than I to measure the static electric characters of such small entities, let alone the variation of those characters under different atmospheric, material, and temporal conditions.
Electrostaticory dispersal? You read it here first. :-D