Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain of Africa, is situated near the equator in tropical eastern Africa. The climatic gradient of the slopes give rise to an abundance of natural vegetation types which, especially in the lower elevations, have often been converted into agriculture or used e.g. for selective logging. As a result, the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro support several prominent natural and human-modified ecosystems. On the southern slope these range from natural savanna and maize fields, through lower montane forests, traditional agroforestry systems (home gardens), commercial coffee farms, and grasslands, montane natural and logged Ocotea forests, upper montane undisturbed and burnt Podocarpus forests, subalpine Erica forest and more open vegetation, and finally to alpine Helichrysum heaths in ~4500 m alt. Each of the ecosystem types had five established study plots, sampled now also for macrolichen diversity. The most diverse lichen communities were found from the upper montane and montane forest zones, with Parmeliaceae as the clearly most prominent lichen family, followed by Lobariaceae, Physciaceae, and Collemataceae in Podocarpus and Ocotea forests, and Cladoniaceae within the Erica zone. Also, the alpine heaths harbor a considerable lichen diversity of mostly saxicolous and terricolous species of Parmeliaceae and Stereocaulaceae. The lower montane forests as well as the more sheltered agricultural habitats, like the home gardens, still support a high lichen diversity with various species of especially Collemataceae, Parmeliaceae, Physciaceae, and Ramalinaceae. In natural savanna and in some of the more open agricultural habitats especially species of Caliciaceae are common. Funding: UK (German Research Foundation, DFG, 408295270).
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