Heteroplacidium fusculum
You might notice something weird about H. fusculum. See how it's always closely surrounded by other crustose lichens? Well that's because it's lichenicolous, meaning it parasitizes other lichens to get its start in life--namely Aspicilia calcarea. What's the benefit of starting out life on another lichen? Well it means that instead of capturing and cultivating its own photobiont cells, it can just steal the energy and even the photobiont cells of the other lichen. This process is called cleptobiosis, literally stealing the biotic partner of another organism. This ultimately leads to the death of A. calcarea, and then H. fusculum continues on living with the captured photobiont. Isn't nature fun?
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