Ascomycetes in rivulets below water level

[mollisia]

Hello,

one of my favorites is searching for ascomycetes living in rivulets on submerged wood. They build a special community which can be found almost everywhere where the condition are met. But those conditions are not easy to find:
- rivulets with floating, clear water (no cattles, no villages upwards!)
- acid soil (rivulets on calcareous soil have too much bases in the water)
- hardwood that can lay for years in the rivulet without being washed away

In those cases, usually in mountaineous areas you come along this biotops and that an example how it could look like:


The log which is signed by the two arrows contains Mollisia rivularis which is shown on the next picture. It is the very same log as in the picture above:



Besides Mollisia rivularis, which is very constant in those biotops, there is another Mollisia, which is not published yet: Mollisia pulviniformis will be its name. It is thick and cushion-like, always pure white (rivularis is usually light grey to blueish-grey) and it reacts yellow with KOH (rivularis does not). There are also microscopical differences in spore size and oil drops.



May be best known as lving under water are the Vibrissea species. There are half a dozen of it appr., but some collections are still unsure and may be there are still undescribed species too. Very easy to determine is Vibrissea truncorum, with the bright golden-orange cap and a black stem (not good to see on the foto):



And one of the unstalked, formerly Apostemidium: Vibrissea flavovirens. In young stage often olivaceous, mature greenish-yellow:




Very easily to misidentify macroscopically is a species which is very similar in young stage, as it is white like all Vibrissea species except flavovirens, but which becomes flesh coloured with age. This is Graddonia coracina, named in honor of the british mycologist GRADDON:



And lastly a genus with only a few species, of which two are fresh water species: Cudoniella. best known is Cudoniella clavus, with a long stalk (usually) and a cushionlike cap. Like Mollisia rivularis and Vibrissea flavovirens it is a species which is highly frequent in the suitable biotops:



It can be mixed with Cudoniella tenuispora, which is in Britain probably better known as Cudoniella clavus var. grandis. I'm totally sure that it is not a variety but a species of its own. The differences are:
fruitbody turbinate, with a broad stalk of 3-6 mm length (tenuispora) - longstalked with a slender stipe of 4-30 mm lenth, nail-like (clavus)
fruitbody diameter 8-20 mm (tenuispora) - 3-10 mm (clavus)
drying ochraceous (tenuispora) - dryinf dark brown, liver-brown (clavus)
porus reaction very faint (tenuispora) - reaction clearly visible although not very strong (clavus).

Here are both, first C. clavus, then C. tenuispora:




The great disadvantage of these fungi is, that they dy very fast outside their biotop. It is not easy to bring them home and still have living asci. When I go for those biotops I take a cooling bag with me and some boxes which close tight, so I can give the collections with water in the cool box and they stay quite vital for a day or so.

Happy foraying!

best regards,
Andreas

[FungiJohn]

Hi Andreas

a very special and interesting community indeed.

I shall take a look at some Derbyshire areas where the conditions are quite favourable.

Thanks for sharing this.

John

Edit:

I find these 'mineral' containers very useful for storing myxomycetes and they could be quite useful for these asco's, especially if the base is lined with a thin layer of cork (tile).

http://www.manchesterminerals.co.uk/..._Minerals.html

[SheffieldLass]

Hi Andreas

Interesting pictures.

Well locally we have acid water, few cows but lots of sheep .... I think it would be very difficult here in the UK to find anywhere that is remote enough to be sufficiently unpolluted that isn't grazed by sheep. Even the remotest bits of Scotland seem to have sheep. We do, if we are lucky, have a few trees in the gullies, usually Quercus or Sorbus or Crataegus, so there might just be some wood in the rivulets. But certainly locally our moorlands from which our streams originate are heavily contaminated with heavy metals, and are also peaty, so I'm not sure that I have the ideal biotope here ..... I'll have a look though ... I suspect I might have more luck if I went searching in the Pyrenees where my parents live, although that is probably the wrong geology.

I think it is a reminder just how unpristine our countryside is in Britain. But maybe if we start looking for these we might be surprised, and find that some areas are better than they might appear to be.

It is interesting that the fungi prefer acid water. Can it be too acid? Our local moorland streams are quite often subjected to very acidic flushes due to certain weather conditions.

When are they most likely to be fruiting?

Melanie

[solus]

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

Even the remotest bits of Scotland seem to have sheep.

And if not sheep there'll nearly always be deer... still I would have thought that some of Scotland's mountain streams could still be relatively unpolluted.
Boy, am I going to be unpopular if as well as poking around on the ground I now start fishing about in mountain streams! Muddy knees and wet feet!

[mollisia]

Hello,

hope really that nobody gets drowned now because of my thread

What concerns the catlle, I don't think that sheep and surely not deer have an influence to the nutrifications of the water. But cattles can have, no doubt.
It is not that the Vibrisseas "like" acid water, but that they are very nitrophob, so they don't like nutrient, they don't like bases (therefore they are not in clacareous areas).

The greatest richness of species is in spring an early summer (April to July, depending on the altitude), but some species are to be found throughout the year. I once went to a known place in the Black Forest in Januray to see, if the ascos were already there. I got stuck in the snow and ice with the car, way down in the forest on 900 m altitude and had to collect branches and stems to prevent my car from sliding into the rivulet .... But the ascos were already there

best regards,
Andreas

[Chris Yeates]

hello all

I have a feeling if I ever meet Andreas we might get on quite well . . . .

because here is one of my favourite types of habitat:

foam like this which forms on relatively fast-flowing streams and then gets trapped is not (except in extreme cases) caused by pollution; a wonderful mycologist called Terence Ingold discovered - half a century or so ago - that these foam-cakes trap and concentrate aquatic fungi - by the million; their 'spores' are actually asexual condia, which because they form in water assume anchor-like shapes and elongated 'S' shapes among others because they do not have to be aerodynamic - but hydrodynamic

anyone with a microscope can find and study these - I can supply literature to enable the identification of a fair few of them; in future posts I shall explain the relatively simple means of collecting and preserving them (once preserved you can examine your samples whenever you want and conduct mini-indoor aquatic forays when the weather is lousy, there's little else about etc.); and Melanie, a lot of pioneering work on these took place in Sheffield under John Webster when he was Professor at the Uni - the Rivelin and Porter Valleys are excellent hunting grounds

so a few examples - these were all collected recently from a single cake of foam in an ordinary stream in a small area of woodland near where I live, in suburban Huddersfield - and if anyone asks you what you are doing I have found that saying 'checking water quality' is sufficient to stop one appearing a weirdo

years ago I would have called this Tricladium splendens but it is now known to be the imperfect state of one of Andreas's discomycetes - Hymenoscyphus splendens:


here is an assemblage with quite a number of species all mixed together:


some more showing some classic 'aquatic hyphomycete' shapes:


probably Anguillospora crassa - literally meaning the "fat eel spore"


Clavariopsis aquatica:


and always an exciting find - the Mother Ship of this science fiction world and dwarfing its companions Actinospora megalospora: (I must stress the above images are at various scales)


I shall get back with more info on these (to me) fantastic organisms - but I'm getting very hungry

PS is there some way that this thread can be brought to the attention of the "Water Life" forum visitors?

cheers

Chris

[mollisia]

Dear Chris,

thank you very very much for this reply! Of course I have heared the name INGOLD and also I have taken notice of this aquatic fungi. But I never came across one. Because I didn't knew where to look for!!! But now I know and the next time I look vor Vibrissea, I collect some of the foam and have a look!

best regards,
Andreas

[SheffieldLass]

Originally Posted by Chris Yeates

hello all

and Melanie, a lot of pioneering work on these took place in Sheffield under John Webster when he was Professor at the Uni - the Rivelin and Porter Valleys are excellent hunting grounds


cheers

Chris

I'll check out the Loxley Valley, it is the next up from the Rivelin, but quite similar. I've dabbled in there looking at fresh water invertebrates and know it very well, and it would be quite interesting to see whether there is anything in one of the tributaries which has mine wash, and also another which is more basic, and compare it with a more acid one. And then go up towards the source and see if it has any of Andreas' ascos. The EA publish yearly data on water quality, nitrates, metals, pH, invertebrate and plant biodiversity etc for the different stretches, and I know the locations of the sampling points, so that might be revealing.

Melanie

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

I'll check out the Loxley Valley, it is the next up from the Rivelin, but quite similar. I've dabbled in there looking at fresh water invertebrates and know it very well, and it would be quite interesting to see whether there is anything in one of the tributaries which has mine wash, and also another which is more basic, and compare it with a more acid one. And then go up towards the source and see if it has any of Andreas' ascos. The EA publish yearly data on water quality, nitrates, metals, pH, invertebrate and plant biodiversity etc for the different stretches, and I know the locations of the sampling points, so that might be revealing.

Melanie

whooahh!

that is a genuinely impressive response to this thread - I have never thought of such subtleties - I shall give a rundown in the next few days of what is needed to study these fungi and will look forward to what you come up with because I have come to this habitat 'cold' as it were, while you clearly can bring lots of serious scientific background info to this area . . . I feel we need to get the Yorkshire WABbers together soon . . . . you, FungiJohn, Nettlerunner, Duke of York, Flaxton and (I'm sure) a lot of others whose names escape me at this moment (plus anyone else who is interested) . . . I would suggest Anston Stones Wood as a rendezvous because it presents such a range of habitats (a wood I remember well from years gone by . . . . and also because I, who travel by public transport can walk there within an hour from Kiveton Park railway station) - it would give us a great opportunity to share knowledge/techniques/interests/chemicals (not naughty ones), etc.

what does everyone think?

Chris

[FungiJohn]

Originally Posted by Chris Yeates

whooahh!

that is a genuinely impressive response to this thread - I have never thought of such subtleties - I shall give a rundown in the next few days of what is needed to study these fungi and will look forward to what you come up with because I have come to this habitat 'cold' as it were, while you clearly can bring lots of serious scientific background info to this area . . . I feel we need to get the Yorkshire WABbers together soon . . . . you, FungiJohn, Nettlerunner, Duke of York, Flaxton and (I'm sure) a lot of others whose names escape me at this moment (plus anyone else who is interested) . . . I would suggest Anston Stones Wood as a rendezvous because it presents such a range of habitats (a wood I remember well from years gone by . . . . and also because I, who travel by public transport can walk there within an hour from Kiveton Park railway station) - it would give us a great opportunity to share knowledge/techniques/interests/chemicals (not naughty ones), etc.

what does everyone think?

Chris

Hi Chris

Les and I are at the stones quite often ... Les almost every day I think

Name the day and lets do it!

John

Edit ... Who's going to bring Andreas ... Maybe we need to organise a international WAB foray