Ecology Of Macrofungi

Macrofungi have significant importance in human health, particularly in nutrition, medicine, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and industries. They occupy a variety of ecosystems such as terrestrial (agricultural lands, forests and deserts), freshwater (bogs and marshes) and maritime (mangroves and coastal sand dunes) habitats. Their ecosystem services like nutrition (humans and animals), medicinal pursuits (antibiotics and pharmaceuticals) and bioremediation (degradation of xenobiotics and insect control) potential are dependent on their diversity and ecological conditions. Macrofungal ecology serves as the basis for nutraceutical values, agricultural benefits, plant productivity, environmental protection and industrially valued biocomposites. This book focuses on various aspects of macrofungal distribution in diverse habitats, participation in organic matter decomposition, ectomycorrhizal associations and participation in biogeochemical cycles. This book reviews the current developments in macrofungal ecology in different habitats and their benefits. Due to the topics dealt with on macrofungal diversity, distribution, dynamics, lifestyles, ecosystem or substrate preferences and ecosystem services, this book is valuable to mycologists, botanists, zoologists, ecologists, foresters, geneticists, agronomists and field biologists.

Advances in Macrofungi: Diversity, Ecology and Biotechnology discusses the diversity and ecology of edible, toxic, medicinal and mycorrhizal macrofungi; the impact of ectomycorrhizal fungi in terrestrial ecosystems, ectomycorrhizal complex in Boreal forests and commercial application of Pseudotsuga in silviculture; the nutritional evaluation and cultivation of edible wild mushrooms; the diversity of novel metabolites of macrofungi useful in food, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries; mushrooms as tool for eco-friendly synthesis of nanoparticles and proteomics of edible and medicinal mushrooms. In addition, it covers experimental designs, methodological approaches, biogeochemical cycles, conceptual/hypothetical models and life history strategies, linking mycorrhizal diversity to plant performance, chemotaxonomy, role of mycorrhizae in forestry and macrofungi in nanotechnology. It provides a valuable resource to graduate, post-graduate and researchers (in botany, microbiology, ecology, biotechnology, forestry, life sciences and environmental sciences) to understand the diversity, ecology, therapeutic value, mutualistic associations and biotechnological potential of macrofungi.

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Life strategies of fungi.- 2 The mycelium and substrates for growth.- 2.1 The mycelium.- 2.2 Spores and other mycelial-derived structures.- 2.3 Substrata and substrates for saprotrophs.- 3 Structure of fungal communities.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Development of fungal communities.- 3.3 Successions.- 4 Colonization and decomposition of leaves.- 4.1 Deposition.- 4.2 Colonization of living leaves.- 4.3 Factors affecting the development of fungal communities on leaf surfaces.- 4.4 Fungal successions in leaf litter.- 4.5 Decomposition of leaf litter.- 5 Development of fungal communities on herbaceous stems and grasses.- 5.1 Distribution of fungal populations on Dactylis glomerata.- 5.2 Interpretation of distribution patterns.- 5.3 Distribution patterns on other plants.- 6 Colonization and decay of wood.- 6.1 Wood as a resource.- 6.2 Colonization of woody tissues.- 6.3 Types of wood rot.- 6.4 Water relations.- 7 Fungi of soil and rhizosphere.- 7.1 Techniques for studying fungi of soil and roots.- 7.2 Fungal distribution in soil.- 7.3 Fungal activity in soil.- 7.4 The rhizosphere and root colonization.- 8 Coprophilous fungi.- 8.1 Succession of coprophilous fungi.- 8.2 Comparison of the fungal flora of different animal dungs.- 8.3 Autecological studies.- 9 Aquatic fungi.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Freshwater fungi.- 9.3 Marine fungi.- 10 Nematophagous fungi.- 10.1 Techniques for studying nematophagous fungi.- 10.2 Distribution and abundance.- 10.3 Ecological characteristics.- 10.4 Biological control of pathogenic nematodes.- 11 Phoenicoid fungi.- 11.1 Chemical, physical and biological changes in soil after burning.- 11.2 Ecological characteristics and phenology.- 11.3 Experimental studies.- 11.4 Fruiting of phoenicoid fungi following volcanic eruptions.- 12 Fungi of extreme environments.- 12.1 Thermotolerant and psychrotolerant fungi.- 12.2 Xerotolerant and osmotolerant fungi.- 13 Terrestrial macrofungi.- 13.1 Introduction.- 13.2 Wood-decay macrofungi.- 13.3 Litter decomposers.- 13.4 Mycorrhizal macrofungi.- References.

Mushrooms are fleshy fungi with a high prospective for the production of secondary metabolites including extracellular enzymes with high agricultural and biotechnological significance. Worldwide, they are well recognized as supplementary foods due to their high nutritional values and their medicinal importance, which includes their uses in exhibiting antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, immune enhancer, and to be effective for the treatment of several diseases including diabetes and few types of cancers as well. According to recent studies, extracellular enzymes produced by several white-rot fungal strains such as Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Pleurotus sajor-caju and several mushrooms have shown a high capacity to decolorize dyes that are very harmful for the environment. Moreover, wild macrofungi have the capability to synthesize nanoparticles which are more useful for the treatment of cancer, gene therapy, DNA analysis and biosensors. Wild macrofungi are extremely important model for basic biology and commercial manufacture.

Readers will perhaps be surprised to find a volume about fungi within a handbook of vegetation science. Although fungi traditionally feature in textbooks on botany, at least since Whittaker (1969), they have mostly been categorised as an independent kingdom of organisms or, in contrast to the animal and plant kingdom, as probionta together with algae and protozoa. More relevant for ecology than the systematic separation of fungi from plants is the different lifestyle of fungi which, in contrast to most plants, live as parasites, saprophytes or in symbiosis. Theoretical factors aside, there are also practical methodological considerations which favour the distinction between fungal and plant communities, as has been shown for example by Dörfelt (1974). Despite their special position the coenology of fungi has been dealt with in the handbook of vegetation science. It would be wrong to conclude that we underestimate the important differences between fungal and plant communities. The reasons for including the former are that mycocoenology developed from phytocoenology, the similarity of the methods and concepts still employed today and the close correlation between fungi and plants in biocoenoses.