Handbook for the measurement of macrofungal functional traits: A start with basidiomycete wood fungi

Abstract

Functional traits are widely recognized as a useful framework for testing mechanisms underlying species community assemblage patterns and ecosystem processes. Functional trait studies in the plant and animal literature have burgeoned in the past 20 years, highlighting a need for standardized ways to measure ecologically meaningful traits across taxa and ecosystems. However, standardized measurements of functional traits are lacking for many organisms and ecosystems, including fungi. Basidiomycete wood fungi occur in all forest ecosystems world‐wide, where they are decomposers and also provide food or habitat for other species, or act as tree pathogens. Despite their major role in the functioning of forest ecosystems, the understanding and application of functional traits in studies of communities of wood fungi lags behind other disciplines. As the research field of fungal functional ecology is growing, there is a need for standardized ways to measure fungal traits within and across taxa and spatial scales. This handbook reviews pre‐existing fungal trait measurements, proposes new core fungal traits, discusses trait ecology in fungi and highlights areas for future work on basidiomycete wood fungi. We propose standard and potential future methodologies for collecting traits to be used across studies, ensuring replicability and fostering between‐study comparison. Combining concepts from fungal ecology and functional trait ecology, methodologies covered here can be related to fungal performance within a community and environmental setting. This manuscript is titled “a start with” as we only cover a subset of the fungal community here, with the aim of encouraging and facilitating the writing of handbooks for other members of the macrofungal community, for example, mycorrhizal fungi. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13239/suppinfo is available for this article.

Functional diversity of ligninolytic fungi associated with leaf litter decomposition

“…Advances in the ecology of ligninolytic fungi associated with leaf litter decomposition over the last 15 years have highlighted the importance of quantifying capabilities of individual fungal species to decompose leaf litter (Hättenschwiler, Tiunov, & Scheu, ; Osono, ; Van der Wal, Geydan, Kuyper, & de Boer, ). Quantifying these capabilities is especially important because such information helps to estimate functional aspects of fungal communities taking part in the decomposition of leaves and other plant tissues (Aguilar‐Trigueros et al, ; Dawson et al, ; Matsuoka, Ogisu, Sakoh, Hobara, & Osono, ; Treseder & Lennon, ). Previous studies examined several fungal strains separately for their ability to decompose leaf litter (De‐Boois, ; Dix & Simpson, ; Hering, ; Kuyper & Bokeloh, ; Lindeberg, ; Mikola, ; Miyamoto, Igarashi, & Takahashi, ; Saito, ; Steffen, Cajthaml, Šnajdr, & Baldrian, ; Valášková et al, ; Žifčáková, Dobiášová, Kolářová, Koukol, & Baldrian, ).…”

“…Kuyper, & de Boer, 2013). Quantifying these capabilities is especially important because such information helps to estimate functional aspects of fungal communities taking part in the decomposition of leaves and other plant tissues (Aguilar-Trigueros et al, 2015;Dawson et al, 2019;Matsuoka, Ogisu, Sakoh, Hobara, & Osono, 2019;Treseder & Lennon, 2015). Previous studies examined several fungal strains separately for their ability to decompose leaf litter (De-Boois, 1976;Dix & Simpson, 1984;Hering, 1967;Kuyper & Bokeloh, 1994;Lindeberg, 1946;Mikola, 1956;Miyamoto, Igarashi, & Takahashi, 2000;Saito, 1960;Steffen, Cajthaml, Šnajdr, & Baldrian, 2007;Valášková et al, 2007;Žifčáková, Dobiášová, Kolářová, Koukol, & Baldrian, 2011).…”

Fungal functional ecology: bringing a trait‐based approach to plant‐associated fungi

“…Open databases will ideally promote establishment of standards as data are shared and discussed in the community. Recommended protocols can be developed for fungi as has occurred, for instance, in plants (http://prometheuswiki.org; Pérez-Harguindeguy et al, 2013) and macro fungi (Dawson et al, 2019).…”

Unifying functional trait approaches to understand the assemblage of ecological communities: synthesizing taxonomic divides

“…Handbooks and protocols exist for various taxa (e.g. plants (Cornelissen et al 2003, Pérez-Harguindeguy et al 2013, terrestrial invertebrates (Fountain-Jones et al 2015, Moretti et al 2017, Brousseau et al 2018, benthic invertebrates (Degen et al 2018), soil invertebrates (Pey et al 2014), protists (Altermatt et al 2015), lotic species (Schmera et al 2015) and macrofungi (Dawson et al 2019)). The creation of trait databases and datasets facilitates functional analyses across a diversity of taxa, including invertebrates, microbes, plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fungi and coral (see Schneider et al 2018 Appendix Table A1 for a full list).…”