Give me a sample of air and I will tell which species are found from your region: Molecular identification of fungi from airborne spore samples.

Fungi are a megadiverse group of organisms, they play major roles in ecosystem functioning and are important for human health, food production and nature conservation. Our knowledge on fungal diversity and fungal ecology is however still very limited, in part because surveying and identifying fungi is time demanding and requires expert knowledge. We present a method that allows anyone to generate a list of fungal species likely to occur in a region of interest, with minimal effort and without requiring taxonomical expertise. The method consists of using a cyclone sampler to acquire fungal spores directly from the air to an Eppendorf tube, and applying DNA barcoding with probabilistic species identification to generate a list of species from the sample. We tested the feasibility of the method by acquiring replicate air samples from different geographical regions within Finland. Our results show that air sampling is adequate for regional-level surveys, with samples collected >100 km apart varying but samples collected <10 km apart not varying in their species composition. The data show marked phenology, and thus obtaining a representative species list requires aerial sampling that covers the entire fruiting season. In sum, aerial sampling combined with probabilistic molecular species identification offers a highly effective method for generating a species list of air-dispersing fungi. The method presented here has the potential to revolutionize fungal surveys, as it provides a highly cost-efficient way to include fungi as a part of large-scale biodiversity assessments and monitoring programs.

Spore sensitivity to sunlight and freezing can restrict dispersal in wood-decay fungi.

Assessment of the costs and benefits of dispersal is central to understanding species' life-history strategies as well as explaining and predicting spatial population dynamics in the changing world. While mortality during active movement has received much attention, few have studied the costs of passive movement such as the airborne transport of fungal spores. Here, we examine the potential of extreme environmental conditions to cause dispersal mortality in wood-decay fungi. These fungi play a key role as decomposers and habitat creators in forest ecosystems and the populations of many species have declined due to habitat loss and fragmentation. We measured the effect of simulated solar radiation (including ultraviolet A and B) and freezing at -25°C on the spore germinability of 17 species. Both treatments but especially sunlight markedly reduced spore germinability in most species, and species with thin-walled spores were particularly light sensitive. Extrapolating the species' laboratory responses to natural irradiance conditions, we predict that sunlight is a relevant source of dispersal mortality at least at larger spatial scales. In addition, we found a positive effect of spore size on spore germinability, suggesting a trade-off between dispersal distance and establishment. We conclude that freezing and particularly sunlight can be important sources of dispersal mortality in wood-decay fungi which can make it difficult for some species to colonize isolated habitat patches and habitat edges.

Do small spores disperse further than large spores?

In species that disperse by airborne propagules an inverse relationship is often assumed between propagule size and dispersal distance. However, for microscopic spores the evidence for the relationship remains ambiguous. Lagrangian stochastic dispersion models that have been successful in predicting seed dispersal appear to predict similar dispersal for all spore sizes up to -40 microm diameter. However, these models have assumed that spore size affects only the downwards drift of particles due to gravitation and have largely omitted the highly size-sensitive deposition process to surfaces such as forest canopy. On the other hand, they have assumed that spores are certain to deposit when the air parcel carrying them touches the ground. Here, we supplement a Lagrangian stochastic dispersion model with a mechanistic deposition model parameterized by empirical deposition data for 1-10 microm spores. The inclusion of realistic deposition improved the ability of the model to predict empirical data on the dispersal of a wood-decay fungus (aerodynamic spore size 3.8 microm). Our model predicts that the dispersal of 1-10 microm spores is in fact highly sensitive to spore size, with 97-98% of 1 microm spores but only 12-58% of 10-microm spores dispersing beyond 2 km in the simulated range of wind and canopy conditions. Further, excluding the assumption of certain deposition at the ground greatly increased the expected dispersal distances throughout the studied spore size range. Our results suggest that by evolutionary adjustment of spore size, release height and timing of release, fungi and other organisms with microscopic spores can change the expected distribution of dispersal locations markedly. The complex interplay of wind and canopy conditions in determining deposition resulted in some counterintuitive predictions, such as that spores disperse furthest under intermediate wind, providing intriguing hypotheses to be tested empirically in future studies.