Contributions

-Patrick Jung is a Ph.D. student at TU Kaiserslautern (GER), working on lichens, cyanobacteria and green algae of the most extreme sites on Earth such as the poles or the Atacama Desert. He conducted the experiments and wrote the article. (Instagram @copperplants)
-Laura Briegel-Williams is a Post Doc at TU Kaiserslautern (GER), researching biological soil crusts of temperate and polar environments. She guided this work and edited the article.
-Burkhard Büdel is the head of the department of plant ecology & systematics at TU Kaiserslautern (GER).  Throughout his career he has investigated biological soil crusts and summarized his work in a plethora of publications and books.
-Lauren Nelson edited the final article. Lauren is a Ph.D. student at Newcastle University (UK), researching computational drug design alongside the Northern Institute for Cancer Research. Lauren also writes a scientific blog aiming to stop science from seeming so boring. (Twitter @ashortscientist; Instagram @ashortscientist; Blog: ashortscientist.wordpress.com)
-Ernesto Llamas made the illustrations. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Universitat de Barcelona doing his research at Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics. Creator of Sketching Science. Instagram @eellamas