Does Epiphytic Lichen Translocation Work? Methods, Outcomes and Future Perspectives

Epiphytic lichens are highly sensitive components of forest ecosystems, increasingly threatened by habitat disturbance and climate change. While habitat protection remains central to lichen conservation, translocation has emerged as a promising tool to address population decline, although its global effectiveness remains poorly evaluated. This scoping review, conducted under PRISMA-ScR guidelines, analyzes 30 taxa across 12 countries to evaluate current methodologies and outcomes. The reviewed literature is largely characterized by small-scale, method-oriented interventions, with a strong predominance of thallus fragment translocation over diaspore-based approaches. Success is most often evaluated through short-term survival and persistence of transplanted material, whereas indicators of long-term population self-maintenance and reproductive viability are rarely considered. Major limitations emerge from technical constraints, including early sample loss due to inadequate fixation, as well as from mismatches between donor requirements and recipient-site microhabitat conditions. Although high initial survival is frequently reported, evidence for long-term population stability, secondary colonization, and genetic resilience remains scarce. Overall, translocation may support short-term establishment under favorable environmental conditions, mainly at local scales, but its reliability as a long-term conservation strategy requires further validation. This review identifies a critical gap in long-term monitoring and highlights the need for research priorities that enhance the effectiveness, conceptual clarity, and technical precision of future translocation efforts to ensure the persistence of epiphytic lichen populations within changing forest landscapes.