Intensive harvesting of forest residues for energy production may lead to the depletion of organic matter and mineral nutrients in the forest floor. In order to restore nutrient content wood ash has been suggested as a fertiliser. Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi are involved in the nutrient uptake of forest trees and this study investigates the influence of intensive harvesting and wood ash fertilis...

The Forest Service's research on decay fungi and decay caused by fungi is done mainly in two research work units at the Forest Products Laboratory. One unit, the Center for Forest Mycology Research, performs biosystematic research on root-rot and products-rot fungi in the genera Armillaria, Phellinus, and Phlebia and maintains the culture collection supporting this research and other research o...

Western North American landscapes are rapidly being transformed by forest die-off caused by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), with implications for plant and soil communities. The mechanisms that drive changes in soil community structure, particularly for the highly prevalent ectomycorrhizal fungi in pine forests, are complex and intertwined. Critical to enhancing understanding wi...

Habitat loss is the main driver of the loss of global biodiversity. Knowledge on this subject, however, is highly concentrated on species richness and composition patterns, with little discussion on the consequences of habitat loss for ecological interactions. Therefore, a systemic approach is necessary to maximize the success of conservation efforts by providing more realistic information abou...

Research Highlights: 1. Soil fungi have a higher influence on seedling density compared to soil environmental factors; 2. Host-specific pathogens and beneficial affect seeding via different influencing mechanisms. Background Objectives: The growth development of seedlings are the key processes that forest regeneration maintain community dynamics. However, factors around their adult conspecifics...

Diverse clades of mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi are potentially involved in competitive or facilitative interactions within host-plant roots. We investigated the potential consequences of these ecological interactions on the assembly process of root-associated fungi by examining the co-occurrence of pairs of fungi in host-plant individuals. Based on massively-parallel pyrosequencing, we anal...

Mutualistic interactions between species are receiving increased attention from ecologists, although research lags far behind analogous work on competition or predator-prey interactions. Most research has focused on rather showy mutualisms such as pollination or fruit dispersal and has suggested that mutualisms are more important in tropical communities than in temperate communities (67). Plant...

Ectomycorrhizal fungi form symbioses with most temperate and boreal tree species, but difficulties in measuring carbon allocation to these symbionts have prevented the assessment of their importance in forest ecosystems. Here, I surveyed allocation patterns in 14 culture studies and five field studies of ectomycorrhizal plants. In culture studies, allocation to ectomycorrhizal fungi (NPPf) was ...

Fungi influence nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, as they are major regulators of decomposition and soil respiration. However, little is known about the substrate preferences of individual fungal species outside of laboratory culture studies. If active fungi differ in their substrate preferences in situ, then changes in fungal diversity due to global change may dramatically influence ...