Ecological considerations

[mollisia]

Originally Posted by KeenTeen17

I now know what sort of soil my local park has because it is full of dark honey fungus

Hallo KT,

be careful! There are exceptions to the rule, where other reasons must let the fungi grow were they shouldn't ;-)
And also I gave these results from the data of south-west Germany and we there have Armillaria ostoyae nearly exclusively on conifers, especially spruce (200x spruce, 15x pine, 2x Larix, 13x indet. conifers, 2x Carpinus, 1x Betula, 2x indet. decidous wood). The data from decidous trees are very very rare and I thought them at the time of publication as to be possibly errouneous and misidentification with A. borealis or A. gallica/lutea. In the meantime I have learned that in other regions the true Dark Honey Mushroom A. ostoyae may also be found on decidous trees. May be on decidous trees he behaves other way then on conifers? At least what concerns the vitality of the *trees*, the soil is important. Picea abies doen't belong on calcareous soils, so it is only natural that these trees that were forced to grow there anyway are highly attackable for any parasite.

ecological questions are highly interesting in these organisms and that is a research field that can mainly only be covered by amateurs, becuase the professional mycologist usually don't have the time for that much field work and they usually are under pressure of publications and cannot have too much long lastings project. But for those questions long lasting field observations are needed.

bestr egards,
Andreas

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by mollisia

Hallo KT,


ecological questions are highly interesting in these organisms and that is a research field that can mainly only be covered by amateurs, becuase the professional mycologist usually don't have the time for that much field work and they usually are under pressure of publications and cannot have too much long lastings project. But for those questions long lasting field observations are needed.

bestr egards,
Andreas

I'm finding this a fascinating thread and want to thank Mollisia for giving us an ecological perspective on things.

Whilst taking up an interest in fungi over the last couple of years I found the comparative lack of ecological information (compared to say flowering plants or bryophytes) quite a stumbling block. I was used to being able to eliminate large numbers of species (of flowering plants and bryophytes again for example) on a habitat basis and found it much more difficult to do so with fungi partly because I didn't know very much but also partly because much less attention seemed to be paid to those relationships in the various texts I looked at. I think historically continental botanists had a slightly different, and perhaps more ecological perspective perhaps the same is true for continental mycologists.

[SheffieldLass]

Originally Posted by RobSutton

I'm finding this a fascinating thread and want to thank Mollisia for giving us an ecological perspective on things.

Whilst taking up an interest in fungi over the last couple of years I found the comparative lack of ecological information (compared to say flowering plants or bryophytes) quite a stumbling block. I was used to being able to eliminate large numbers of species (of flowering plants and bryophytes again for example) on a habitat basis and found it much more difficult to do so with fungi partly because I didn't know very much but also partly because much less attention seemed to be paid to those relationships in the various texts I looked at. I think historically continental botanists had a slightly different, and perhaps more ecological perspective perhaps the same is true for continental mycologists.

I agree.

If we got into the habit of listing fungi communities in relation to the National Vegetation Classification of the habitat they are found in, I wonder whether there would appear to be very distinctive communities. My feeling is that there would be. Has any research/data been gathered along these lines? I guess I've been trained to think along those lines, so it seems a natural way to think about the habitat to me, but probably not to others!

An interactive database on a computer could have a big advantage over books by letting you search by habitat as well as other characteristics. I guess they will appeaar in due course .... maybe they exist already ...

I've found too that keys often do not make an early choice between substrate, even where there is little chance of confusion (i.e.mycenas growing in grassland compared to growing on wood). So I plough through all sorts of microscopic features and then end up with the name of a species that turns out to be on a very different substrate to the one I'm trying to id ...

Melanie

[mollisia]

Hallo Melanie,

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

If we got into the habit of listing fungi communities in relation to the National Vegetation Classification of the habitat they are found in, I wonder whether there would appear to be very distinctive communities. My feeling is that there would be. Has any research/data been gathered along these lines? I guess I've been trained to think along those lines, so it seems a natural way to think about the habitat to me, but probably not to others!

yes, there are several such things. In Germany we have different programs to collect the data of fungi. There not only the location, date and finder is noted, but also ecological parameters can be chosen. One of it, called "Pilzoek", has some hundreds of plant communities you can choose for your gatherings. A road braking work in this direction is the doctor theses of Lothar KRIEGLSTEINER (the son of German KRIEGLSTEINER, who is the editor of the Distribution Atlas of Fungi in Germany). It is called "The fungi of the Main-Fränkische Platte [this is a special region in south Germany] and their connection to the natural vegetation". In this theses he lists all the speies of fungi and myxos he came across in three years field work (2,200 species!!) and gives the botanic community they were found in (e.g. Carici-Fagetum, or Gentiano-Koelerietum or things like this). As he often found a species several times, you can imagine how many data in this theses are! It is 964 pages thick, by the way.

But there are even earlier works which deal with fungi and their place in the botanical communities. The very first publication in this direction was the master theses of my mentor and mycological grandpa Dr. Hans Haas (the genus Haasiella is named in his honor). He compared the species composition of Picea-Abies-forests along the border sand stone vs. lime stone at the eastern frontier of the Black Forest (sw-Germany). There is a very sharp delimitation between these two very different soils running from north to south in a length of appr. 100 kilometers. And the forest vegetation is in many many places the very same on both soil types. So you walk through an Abies-Picea forest on acid sand stone for two kilometers, then hopp over the rivulet and the next two kilometers are the same Abies-Picea forest but on calcareous lime stone! Of course it was very interesting how the fungal flora changed from one soil to the other. It changed nearly completely!
He also not only noticed the species on his plots, but give their abundance and sociability according to the methode of Braun-Blanquet. This is today *the* standard methode in Botany. But when HAAS wrote his master theses in 1932 (!) the publication of Braun-Blanquet was only 5 years old! And it was at that time not very widely accepted. So it was quite brave of HAAS to have his theses about such a topic, in mycology, when the methode not even in botany was unanimousely accepted.
You can imagine, as mycologists as HAAS and KRIEGLSTEINER are my mycological mentors, that ecology fascinates my especially. I published myself such a investigation, made along montaneous riversides on the muddy ground under leaves of Petasites, were i gave the abundance for each species. Alsot here were same character species, e.g. Typhula uncialis. And the same I plan since many years to publish for the discomycete community living on hardwood lying in floating rivulets in mountainous areas. There are at least 20 species which form are very shap delimitated community, which only lives on hard wood fallen into and stuck there for years in small rivers in mountainous areas. All are very reliable diagnostic species for fresh and unpolluted water. They immediately disappear when only slightest traces of nutrients come into the river. Be that from the soil (they don't exist on lime stone) or from outside (cattles grazing there for a season and the species are away ...)

And, actually, there are quite many publications dealing with special fungal communities, which have been named in the way the botanist do. E.g. a Trametetum hirsutae as a community on freshly fallen wood in sun exposed position. The character species of this are Trametes hirsuta, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus and Schizophyllum commune. Some of you surely know this community from excursions without knowing that it is a defined and named fungal society.


Oops, I realize that I'm writing meters again .... I don't want to make all yawn here and be shorter in future, promised!

An interactive database on a computer could have a big advantage over books by letting you search by habitat as well as other characteristics. I guess they will appeaar in due course .... maybe they exist already ...

yes there exist many of them, as already pointed out. But the main problem in all these programs and databases is, that the results only can be good when the data given into the program are 100% trustable - and they never are. They never can be, in my opinion. Everybody makes mistakes, opinions change with the years, here and there are guys which know and find *all* fungi despite their limited knowledge, etc. etc.
It is my job (job means not that it is paid for ... ) at the moment to compile the 5th volume of the series "Großpilze Baden-Württembergs", which have the main aim to show, which are the ecological, chorological and phenological parameters for each species that occurs in this county. It comprises the dark spored Agaricaceae, the Coprinaceae (in the hitherto sense) and the Cortinariaceae (in the hitherto sense). Of course one has to filter the data which come out of the programm, that's only natural. That's also the reason why you can't let that work do a computer or a secretary.
Here are 4 pages as example of the vol. 4 of this series:

I've found too that keys often do not make an early choice between substrate, even where there is little chance of confusion (i.e.mycenas growing in grassland compared to growing on wood). So I plough through all sorts of microscopic features and then end up with the name of a species that turns out to be on a very different substrate to the one I'm trying to id ...

Yes, that's sometimes anoying, I admit that. But on the other hand there are so many keys which don't work properly because there is too much emphasis on the ecology as key character. In my eyes one has *always* to find differences between species without taking the ecology into account. Of course a different ecology should ring a bell in your brain, but to use it as key characters is in most cases dangerous or even senseless. I have often heared the people in my course being angry about key questions like "under conifers" vs. "under broadleaf trees". Sounds good, but not when you collect fungi in a Abieto-Fagetum or a pine-oak-forest or any mixed forest. Also the example of you is dangerous, because when you have a wooden stick or roots burried in the ground inside a meadow, everyone would chose the key character "in meadows" and not the correct one "on wood"

But you are right, I lay much stress on ecological differences and I#m doiing hard to believe that one and the same species might e.g. occure in a calcareous beech forest and also in an nutrient poor pine forest on sand with Cladonia. But if I notice that, I have to look for differences between collcetions from these two different ecological sites. And if I don't find any? Then there are perhaps none ...

Tricholoma psammopus is a 100% strictly to Larix confined species in Central and Northern Europe. In South France it occurs (also) with Pinus pinaster. And not even the French have found differences, not even to make a variety out of the pine collections ....

best regards,
Andreas

[flaxton]

Originally Posted by mollisia

Hallo Melanie,






Yes, that's sometimes anoying, I admit that. But on the other hand there are so many keys which don't work properly because there is too much emphasis on the ecology as key character. In my eyes one has *always* to find differences between species without taking the ecology into account. Of course a different ecology should ring a bell in your brain, but to use it as key characters is in most cases dangerous or even senseless. I have often heared the people in my course being angry about key questions like "under conifers" vs. "under broadleaf trees". Sounds good, but not when you collect fungi in a Abieto-Fagetum or a pine-oak-forest or any mixed forest. Also the example of you is dangerous, because when you have a wooden stick or roots burried in the ground inside a meadow, everyone would chose the key character "in meadows" and not the correct one "on wood"

Andreas

Andreas
I think it was you that said that although M. seynii only grows on a cone a Mycena on a fir cone is not necessarily M. seynii so ecology cannot take you to an id everytime.

Mal

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by flaxton

Andreas
I think it was you that said that although M. seynii only grows on a cone a Mycena on a fir cone is not necessarily M. seynii so ecology cannot take you to an id everytime.

Mal

But taking it the other way round the fact that it's on a fir cone means it can't be quite a lot of things. Once you know this it speeds up the identification no end. I've been looking at the draft of the new moss and liverwort field guide being produced by the British Bryological Society and they've put the habitat very early in their key as a way of aiding the identification of mosses and liverworts in the field. I think they felt that a lack of a good (real) field guide was stopping people taking up an interest in the group - in the past all the moss and liverwort identification books relied very heavily on microscopy as is the case with fungi.

There have been a couple of popular fungi books that took a habitat approach - the one that springs to mind is the little Mitchell Beazley pocket guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools by David Pegler which I found very useful to start with but soon realised it's big limitation was the limited range of species included. I just wonder whether a much more comprehensive habitat based field guide would work for fungi in making them more accessible to a wider range of naturalists. Obviously the proviso for both mosses and fungi would have to be that final critical determination depends on microscopic characters and that would have to be stated quite clearly.

[mollisia]

Originally Posted by RobSutton

But taking it the other way round the fact that it's on a fir cone means it can't be quite a lot of things. Once you know this it speeds up the identification no end.

Hallo Rob,

I'm not too happy about those keys, because it speeds *not* your identification up, but makes it less sure. Exactly in the case of Mycena it is not too rare that species which inhabit coniferous wood occure on cones. Cones and coniferous twigs are not much difference for most Mycena. Especially M. rubromarginata and purpureofusca occur on cones, Mycena adscendens usually grows on small pieces of wood, but may well occur on Alnus cones. Nevertheless there is a similar Mycena which *exclusevly* grows on Alnus cones (at least as far as we know it grows exclusevly there). Don't remember the name, sorry.

I'm also not an enthusiastic friend of the books of ELLIS & ELLIS. Not because the authors, they did a great job really, but because the users. I had it so many times that people believe it correct to determine their species after the host it is living on: Ah, this is a Hymenoscyphus on Salix, so let's look which one is in ELLIS & ELLIS listed on this substrate, and determination is ready.
You can do in most cases so for phytopathogenic fungi such as rusts.

But the idea is nevertheless good, to make a field giude with keys that try to use ecological key characters as soon as possible. The disadvantage you have to take is, that you have a certain percentage of incorrectness. I can't imagine how high this will be. May be quite high in certain groups, where there are not much ecological specialists (Clitocybe or Melanoleuca e.g.), but may quite useful in other groups.
This key could also be a kind of additon to a traditional key, so that one could use either this or that.
The very best would probably be a synoptic key of ecological characters, so that you can chose all the characters you know by useself and are not forced to follow a given path.But I suppose, that there are too many species which are not well defined, so that it wouldn't work.
But nevertheless a fascinating idea which is worth thinking more of. May be for certain groups or genera ....

best regards,
Andreas

[cybershot]

On many occasions my fellow forayers and I have questioned, aside from the acknowledge habitats and mycorrhizal relationships etc., whether or not we were looking in areas with the correct ecological footprint when on the look out for particular species or more prolific fruiting of species in general.

The possibilities of correlating this information on various national datasets is another intriguing proposition.

David

[CapAndBracket]

Certainly an interesting subject, and of course climate does come into the
equation.

I think we are all agreed that 2006 was a marvelous year, unbeknown to me
was that a stranger in the form of Fomitopsis pinicola had appeared, this was found early 2007, and subsequent searches alone and with colleaques
produced no less than 11 communities on various substrates.

I think we are all agreed that 2007 was a wet summer, continued monitoring
of the F.pinicola sites has ended with only 2 producing fruit bodies in the year,



The above is on Betula, this would suggest as one explanation that the
species dosn't like the wet and if the same summer climate continue it will
dissapear again.

Predation is an environmental variable and how much are fungi eaten by for
example deer?, the question is prompted due to one large Salix log that was
sporting an F.pinicola in marsh ground, some Jersey cattle were turned into
this area last Autumn and left there till they got real hungry.



Your can see silouet on end of log were fungi was, they ate it and much of the log, (did the
mycelium make it tasty?).

Cheers J.P.