Diversity and ecological distribution of macrofungi in the Laojun Mountain region, southwestern China

Abstract

Surveys of the macrofungi associated with eight different vegetation types in the Laojun Mountain region of southwestern China yielded approximately 520 species belonging to 175 genera. Species richness and diversity were highest in mixed conifer and broadleaf forests and deciduous broadleaf forests. In typical forests of temperate regions of the world, there are five dominant genera of ectomycorrhizal macrofungi. The distribution patterns of species in these genera for the different vegetation types indicate that they are able to associate with a wide variety of different trees. Analysis of data for common macrofungal species and taxonomic similarity of the communities present in the eight vegetation types suggest that the greater the differences in the plant species that comprise the vegetation, the less similar are the common macrofungal species associated with the most common host plants. These same data also show that some species of macrofungi occur only in one or two vegetation types. There were 156 species of edible fungi recorded from the different vegetation types, and these fungi appear to be abundant in the Laojun Mountain region. At different positions along the elevation gradient, positive correlations existed with respect to the relationship between species richness and diversity, and the general trend was for macrofungal species richness and diversity to decrease with increasing elevation, with the numbers of species recorded being significantly lower at the very highest elevation. The relative dominance of certain taxa in the assemblage of species present was found to increase with increasing elevation, and variation in the evenness component of diversity was slight. As such, the differences in dominance and evenness were also not significant (P [ 0.05). Macrofungal species richness was slightly more diverse on shaded slopes than on more exposed (sunny) slopes, and the differences in species diversity, dominance and evenness were relatively minor. This suggests that slope aspect may only weakly influence the distribution of macrofungal species in the Laojun Mountain region.

Patterns of macromycete community assemblage along an elevation gradient: options for fungal gradient and metacommunity analyse

“…Braga-Neto et al 2008;Durall et al 2006;Gates et al 2011a, b, c;McMullan-Fisher et al 2010;Sysouphanthong et al 2010). The turnover of species between habitats along environmental gradients is thought to be one of the dominant factors affecting macrofungal species richness at landscape scales (Braga-Neto et al 2008;Brown et al 2006;Lodge et al 1995;Nantel and Neumann 1992), and it has been demonstrated that environmental gradients related to altitude affect the diversity and distribution of macromycetes (O'Dell et al 1999;Zhang et al 2010). A literature review on species richness patterns showed that about half of the elevation gradient studies detected a mid-altitude peak in species richness (Rahbek 1995).…”

Diversity of macromycetes determined by tree species, vegetation structure, and microenvironment in tropical cloud forests in Veracruz, Mexico

“…Vegetation structure and plant species composition vary along environmental gradients, and this variation affects the macrofungal community and the presence of species associated to woody plants. The relationship between tree and fungal communities is reflected in host trees affecting fungal specialization and providing unique habitat availability and different resource quality (Villeneuve et al 1989;Lodge 1997;Ferrer and Gilbert 2003;Richard et al 2004;Brown et al 2006;Zhang et al 2010). Macromycete richness and distribution patterns have been related to the composition and structure of the tree community in temperate (Nantel and Neumann 1992;Gabel and Gabel 2007;Marmolejo and Méndez-Cortes 2007) and tropical habitats.…”

“…Climatic and microclimatic conditions change with elevation; however, the changes of the diversity of macromycetes owing to elevation have been scarcely studied (Pouska et al 2010;Zhang et al 2010). Recent studies have concluded that precipitation (Lange 1978;Salerni et al 2002) or both humidity and temperature (Durall et al 2006) are the main factors related to macromycete fruiting.…”

New locality of Hymenochaete cruenta in the Olbina nature reserve and revisiting of distribution of this fungus in Poland

“…In terms of occurrence, H. cruenta is considered as very rare and rare species, recorded in the mountains more frequently than in uplands or lowlands (e.g., [5,23,32,36]). According to Parmasto [23], H. cruenta grows especially on the bark of various species of the genus Abies, and its occurrence on Picea is doubtful.…”

“…Hymenochaete cruenta is a widespread fungus, known from Asia (China, Georgia, India, Japan, North Korea, Russia-Caucasus, and Turkey), South America (Argentina) and Europe (e.g., [23,24,32,[34][35][36]). In Europe, where its distribution is associated with the natural range of A. alba, H. cruenta has been announced to occur in Austria [23,37], Bulgaria [17], Croatia [38], the Czech Republic [9,23], France [23,39], Germany [40][41][42][43], Great Britain [44], the Macedonia Republic [45], the Netherlands [25], Italy [17,46], Romania [47,48], Russia [23], Slovakia [49], Slovenia [50], Spain [51,52], Switzerland [16], and Ukraine [5].…”