A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Wood-inhabiting fungal responses to forest naturalness vary among morpho-groups




AuthorsPurhonen Jenna, Abrego Nerea, Komonen Atte, Huhtinen Seppo, Kotiranta Heikki, Læssøe Thomas, Halme Panu

PublisherNature Research

Publication year2021

JournalScientific Reports

Journal name in sourceScientific Reports

Volume11

Issue1

eISSN2045-2322

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93900-7

Web address https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93900-7

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/66666373


Abstract

The general negative impact of forestry on wood-inhabiting fungal diversity is well recognized, yet the effect of forest naturalness is poorly disentangled among different fungal groups inhabiting dead wood of different tree species. We studied the relationship between forest naturalness, log characteristics and diversity of different fungal morpho-groups inhabiting large decaying logs of similar quality in spruce dominated boreal forests. We sampled all non-lichenized fruitbodies from birch, spruce, pine and aspen in 12 semi-natural forest sites of varying level of naturalness. The overall fungal community composition was mostly determined by host tree species. However, when assessing the relevance of the environmental variables separately for each tree species, the most important variable varied, naturalness being the most important explanatory variable for fungi inhabiting pine and aspen. More strikingly, the overall species richness increased as the forest naturalness increased, both at the site and log levels. At the site scale, the pattern was mostly driven by the discoid and pyrenoid morpho-groups inhabiting pine, whereas at the log scale, it was driven by pileate and resupinate morpho-groups inhabiting spruce. Although our study demonstrates that formerly managed protected forests serve as effective conservation areas for most wood-inhabiting fungal groups, it also shows that conservation planning and management should account for group- or host tree -specific responses.


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Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 19:29