The effect of disturbance on the resistant propagule community (RPC) of ectomycorrhizal fungi has been given relatively little attention. In this study we investigate the effects of heat, one important factor of fire disturbances, on the ability of ectomycorrhizal RPC fungi to colonize Pinus jeffreyi seedlings in greenhouse bioassays. Prior to planting the seed, soils were collected from an old...

Dispersal plays a prominent role in most conceptual models of community assembly. However, direct measurement of dispersal across a whole community is difficult at ecologically relevant spatial scales. For cryptic organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, the scale and importance of dispersal limitation has become a major point of debate. We use an experimental island biogeographic approach to mea...

Fungi grow under humid conditions and are, therefore, prone to biofilm infections. A 16S rRNA fingerprint analysis was performed on 49 sporocarps of Basidiomycotina in order to determine whether they are able to control these biofilms. Ninety-five bacterial phylotypes, comprising 4 phyla and 10 families, were identified. While ectomycorrhizal fungi harbored the highest bacterial diversity, sapr...

1. Previous studies in humid forests have shown that the 13 C and 15 N isotopic composition differs between ectomycorrhizal (ECM) and saprotrophic (SAP) fungi, and that this ECM–SAP ‘divide’ may provide a useful tool for evaluating fungal trophic status. 2. We evaluated whether this method could delineate the trophic status of fungi in two semiarid, temperate forests of the south-western USA. T...

ectomycorrhizal community change over a nitrogen deposition gradient in Alaska. Ecology 83: 104–115. Lumbsch HT, Buchanan PK, May TW, Mueller GM. 2008. Phylogeography and biogeography of fungi. Mycological Research 112: 423–424. Matheny PB, Aime MC, Bougher NL, Buyck B, Desjardin DE, Horak E, Kropp BR, Lodge DJ, Soytong K, Trappe JM et al. 2009. Out of the palaeotropics? Historical biogeography...

Fungi are major players in the carbon cycle in forest ecosystems due to the wide range of interactions they have with plants either through soil degradation processes by litter decayers or biotrophic interactions with pathogenic and ectomycorrhizal symbionts. Secretion of fungal proteins mediates these interactions by allowing the fungus to interact with its environment and/or host. Ectomycorrh...

Assessing genetic variation within populations and genetic exchange between populations requires an understanding of the distribution and abundance of individual genotypes within the population. Previous workers have used somatic incompatibility testing to distinguish clones or individuals in natural populations of ectomycorrhizal fungi. However, somatic incompatibility tests performed with iso...