Diversity of culturable microfungi of coal mine spoil tips in Svalbard

Tolerance of Rare-Earth Elements in Extremophile Fungus Umbelopsis isabellina from Polar Loparite Ore Tailings in Northwestern Russia

“…Taking into account these conditions, the loparite-containing sands from the tailing damp of Lovozersky MPP should be considered as an extreme environment. Contrarily, the number of fungi found in the dumps of coal mines in Spitsbergen, where micromycetes were provided with a sufficient level of organic carbon, exceeded the values obtained in our case by more than an order of magnitude [9]. It is noteworthy that the abundance of the dominant isolate U. isabellina was significantly higher (by three times) in the samples taken from S1 as compared with S2 in contrast with other dominant species, although the total number of isolates decreased.…”

“…Thus, the amount of micromycetes was 50% higher (12 ± 4 CFU/g) in sands from the exploited site S2 than in sands from the preserved site S1 (8 ± 2 CFU/g), which were stored about 40 years ago. This finding contrasts with the results of other studies, which reported that average microfungal density increases with the age of mining waste [9,15]. For instance, in 10-year-old nepheline sands from the tailing dump of an apatite-nepheline mining enterprise located on the Kola Peninsula, the abundance of micromycetes has increased 24 times compared to freshly deposited sands, reaching a level of 300 CFU/g [15].…”

“…In addition, some microfungi may be able to colonize technogenic landscapes created by anthropogenic activities, such as those polluted with oil and mining products, heavy metals, toxic chemicals, municipal solid waste, etc. [9,10,15,16,[24][25][26][27]. Microfungal strains isolated from these environments are able to tolerate and detoxify high concentrations of heavy metals [10,27], e.g., Penicillium simplicissimum and Aspergillus foetidus show higher rates of growth in the presence of heavy metals [28].…”