Myxomycetes associated with grassland litter in the Philippines

Abstract

Myxomycetes are homogenous group of eukaryotic fungus-like protists that are commonly associated with any decaying plant materials. Since no report of myxomycete association in grass litters were reported for the Philippines, a myxomycete survey employing moist chamber technique was conducted from 300 grass litter samples collected from ten different grassland areas in the country. Our results showed that 81% of the moist chambers yielded myxomycetes either as fruiting bodies or plasmodia. Species of myxomycetes identified in this study included the genera Arcyria, Badhamia, Collaria, Comatricha, Cribraria, Diderma, Didymium, Lamproderma, Perichaena, Physarum and Stemonitis. These species can easily be dispersed by wind and hence, their presence in the collected substrata. The cosmopolitan species Arcyria cinerea and the common grass myxomycetes Physarum cinereum were reported to be abundant among the myxomycetes recorded. Overall, the study presented the myxobiota present in tropical grasslands and grass patches found in the Philippines.

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

“…Similarly, Dagamac et al (2010) obtained a productivity yield as low as 22.5% from the bark samples collected from Samanea saman trees in the tropical Philippines, albeit higher productivity was observed for other substrata collected in the country, e.g. in the studies of Dagamac et al (2015aDagamac et al ( , 2015b, Rea-Maminta et al (2015), Macabago et al (2016), Carascal et al (2017), Dagamac et al (2017), and Pecundo et al (2017). Comparably, Vaz et al (2017) obtained a productivity yield of 46.7% from the barks of different trees in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Brazil.…”

Occurrence of leaf litter inhabiting myxomycetes from lowland forest patches of Northern and Central Vietnam

“…In contrast, this percentage yield is much higher compared to the one reported in some recent studies in the Philippines in a man-made ecopark (Macabago et al 2010) and in an anthropogenic disturbed lowland mountainous forest (Dagamac et al 2011(Dagamac et al , 2014 with only 51% and 23%, respectively. Thus, in the tropical and subtropical forest, where the fructifications are quickly decayed or can be washed off completely by the heavy rains, the technique of using moist chamber cultures in the laboratory is still considered an effective method (Stephenson et al 1993;Corpuz et al 2012;Dagamac et al 2012;Tran et al 2014;Carascal et al 2017). However, an investigation by Novozhilov et al (2017) implemented in southern Vietnam using both moist chamber technique and fieldwork stated that 29 species found in the field could not be present in the moist chambers, or 47 species found in the moist chamber could not be easily found in the field.…”

Documenting the first records of myxomycetes on rice litter of Cotabato, Southern Mindanao, Philippines

“…Moist chamber productivity was used to evaluate the ability of each microhabitat (aerial and ground rice litter) to support myxomycete growth (Carascal et al 2017). It was calculated as a percent yield according to Dagamac et al (2012).…”

“…The closest investigation ever done was with another grass species with little to no economic importance, Imperata sp. (Carascal et al 2017). This proves that despite the increasing attention to studies of monotypic vegetation, many possible microhabitats -especially agroecosystems -are still left untouched.…”

“…This role has been pointed out as the possible reason to why the majority of previous reports on foliicolous (leaf inhabiting) myxomycetes diversity is concentrated and conducted on vegetation with high plant heterogeneity (Redeña-Santos et al 2017). This remains true with studies in the Philippines showing relatively high myxomycetes diversity in terrestrial ecosystems with heterogenous vegetation (e.g., forest floor litter) (Dagamac et al 2012;Macabago et al 2016;Pecundo et al 2017) in comparison to litter from those with homogenous vegetation (Carascal et al 2017;Macabago et al 2017). Thus, specific plant microhabitat associations of myxomycetes are believed to be comparably limited and less understood (Buisan et al 2019).…”