Data on the fungal species consumed by mammal species in Australia

The data reported here support the manuscript Nuske et al. (2017). Searches were made for quantitative data on the occurrence of fungi within dietary studies of Australian mammal species. The original location reported in each study was used as the lowest grouping variable within the dataset. To standardise the data and compare dispersal events from populations of different mammal species that might overlap, data from locations were further pooled and averaged across sites if they occurred within 100 km of a random central point. Three locations in Australia contained data on several (>7) mycophagous mammals, all other locations had data on 1–3 mammal species. Within these three locations, the identity of the fungi species was compared between mammal species’ diets. A list of all fungi species found in Australian mammalian diets is also provide along with the original reference and fungal synonym names

Redundancy among mammalian fungal dispersers and the importance of declining specialists

Hypogeous sequestrate (truffle-like) fungi rely primarily on consumption by mammals for dispersal. Most truffle-like fungi are ectomycorrhizal, making mammalian dispersers essential to the maintenance of plant-fungal relationships, soil fungal diversity and ecosystem functioning. Australia has the highest current global rate of mammalian extinctions, including important fungal specialists within the family Potoroidae. Knowing the relative importance of different mammal species as dispersers helps us to understand how this loss in mammal diversity could affect plant-fungi interactions and fungal diversity. Despite detecting a sampling bias in the literature, our meta-analysis confirms that mammals with fungal specialist diets contribute disproportionally more to the potential dispersal of fungi than other mammals within Australia. Three mammal species with generalist diets also consumed fungi at comparable rates to fungal specialist species and, importantly, persist in many areas where fungal specialists are now absent. These results highlight the significance of mammals, particularly fungal specialists, for maintaining diverse ectomycorrhizal fungal communitie

Data on the fungal species consumed by mammal species in Australia

The data reported here support the manuscript Nuske et al. (2017) [1]. Searches were made for quantitative data on the occurrence of fungi within dietary studies of Australian mammal species. The original location reported in each study was used as the lowest grouping variable within the dataset. To standardise the data and compare dispersal events from populations of different mammal species that might overlap, data from locations were further pooled and averaged across sites if they occurred within 100 km of a random central point. Three locations in Australia contained data on several (>7) mycophagous mammals, all other locations had data on 1–3 mammal species. Within these three locations, the identity of the fungi species was compared between mammal species’ diets. A list of all fungi species found in Australian mammalian diets is also provide along with the original reference and fungal synonym names

Diversity analysis of soil dematiaceous hyphomycetes from the Yellow River source area: I* §

Twenty-four soil samples of eight ecosystem-types around the Yellow River source area were investigated for the number and specific composition of soil dematiaceous hyphomycetes by dilution plate technique. And then the co-relationship between genus species of soil dematiaceous hyphomycetes and ecosystem-types was analyzed. The results show that the amount and species distribution of soil dematiaceous hyphomycetes had an obvious variability in different ecosystem-types, and that the dominant genus species varied in the eight ecosystem-types studied, with Cladosporium being the dominant genus in seven of the eight ecosystem-types except wetland. The index of species diversity varied in different ecosystem-types. The niche breadth analysis showed that Cladosporium had the highest niche breadth and distributed in all ecosystem-types, while the genera with a narrow niche breadth distributed only in a few ecosystem-types. The results of niche overlap index analysis indicated that Stachybotrys and Torula, Doratomyces and Scolecobasidium, Cladosporium and Chrysosporium had a higher niche overlap, whereas Arthrinium and Gliomastix, Phialophora and Doratomyces, Oidiodendron and Ulocladium had no niche overlap