Influence of cardinal directions on corticolous myxomycetes associated with Swietenia macrophylla King

Abstract

Barks of living trees serve as a microhabitat for a distinct assemblage of myxomycetes, the corticolous myxomycetes. In this study, we sampled 86 living <em>Swietenia macrophylla</em> trees for bark samples at four cardinal directions (North, East, South, West) to prepare 344 moist chambers. Of these, only 134 moist chambers yielded myxomycetes recorded either as fruiting bodies or plasmodia. Our study also recorded a total of 125 determinable fruiting bodies which were identified as belonging to 22 species, 11 genera, and 7 taxonomic orders and with the most number of taxa recorded in the west (17) and south (14), followed by east (12) and north (11) directions. Eleven taxa were recorded as abundant, with three taxa of <em>Licea</em> having the highest number of records. Comparing species composition, only four species were common in all directions. Following statistical analysis, we did not observe any significant differences between the diversity values per cardinal direction.

Konya-Beyşehir karayolu güzergahındaki miksomiset çeşitliliği

“…As it is the general case, 71.25% of the samples were corticolous myxomycetes detected on the bark. The bark of the branches and trunks of trees (Ing, 1994) are suitable substrates for myxomycetes (Snell and Keller, 2003;Liu et al, 2015;Policina and dela Cruz, 2020). The water holding capacity of the bark, the general shape of the tree, the surface texture of the bark, and the epiphytic cover of algae, moss, liverwort and lichens (Everhart andKeller, 2008, Stephenson andStephen, 2000) facilitate colonization by more species (Keller and Braun, 1999).…”