SPOR E PR I N TS BULLETIN OF THE PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY Number 568 January 2021 SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN taching to roots and extending threadlike hyphae in every direction CALIFORNIA OAKS AND MUTUALISTIC FUNGI underground—the so-called “Wood Wide Web”—mycorrhizae APPEARS TO PROVIDE A BUFFER FOR give the woodland tree and plant community access to nutrients CLIMATE CHANGE Sonia Fernandez from faraway places. https://phys.org/, Dec. 9, 2020 “They get all of their energy in an exchange for carbon from trees and other plants,” Bui said. “And then they give their hosts nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil.” These fungi provide almost half of a tree’s organic nitrogen budget, according to the study, and contribute the bulk of new carbon into the soil. To get a sense of how warming could affect California’s woodland soil fungal community, the team sampled soils at sites along an Wikimedia Commons arid (dry) to mesic (moderately moist) climactic gradient at the Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi mountains. “The sites we worked at were a proxy for what we think California would look like with future climate change,” Bui said. As one Mutualist root fungi extend the reach of plants ascends from the warmer, drier base of the mountains into the and trees to nutrients in faraway places. cooler, moister elevations, the landscape changes with the tem- “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in perature and relative humidity, giving the researchers a glimpse its own way.” So goes the first line of Leo Tolstoy’sAnna Karen- of what California woodlands might look like as climate change ina. Little did the Russian novelist know his famous opening line forces them to retract. would one day be used to describe microbial communities, their Of particular interest to the team were the soils around the oak trees health, and their relationships to their hosts. that dot the landscape, where, in addition to the decomposers and It’s this idea that an unhealthy or stressed host to a microbiome has pathogenic fungi in the soil, tree-mutualist mycorrhizae create their a more diverse microbiome than its healthy counterpart,” said UC vast networks. The researchers were interested in how the number Santa Barbara ecologist An Bui, a graduate student researcher in of species and their abundance might change between sites. the lab of theoretical ecologist Holly Moeller. The diversity, she “As it turns out, the fungal communities are completely different,” said, is a response to variable conditions that may in turn indicate Bui said. “And the hottest, driest sites have the highest number and an unstable or stressed environment. “Healthy hosts are probably the greatest diversity in fungal species.” True to the Anna Karenina going to have very similar microbiomes,” she said, “while un- hypothesis, the trees under the more arid, stressful conditions had healthy hosts are different in their own ways.” the most diverse and dispersed fungal communities. Bui and colleagues recently put the Anna Karenina hypothesis But, while the larger fungal communities varied from site to site, to the test in California’s Tehachapi mountains as they sought to Bui said, the communities of mutualists within them tended to understand how climate change might affect fungal communities remain the same, save for small shifts within the mutualist pop- in woodland soil in a future California. ulations to select for traits that could be more useful under the “Fungi are really important for woodland systems,” said Bui, the circumstances. lead author of a study that appears in the journal FEMS Micro- “When we looked at ectomycorrhizae and arbuscular mycorrhizae, biology Ecology. “But we don’t necessarily know how they will those communities were more similar across climactic conditions change with climate change.” than the whole fungal community,” she said. “So there’s a possi- As the global average temperature rises, forests and woodlands bility that host association for mutualists at least buffers that shift around the world are under increasing threat, she explained. in community structure the whole fungal community experiences.” “It’s not just about temperature and rainfall, but also the organisms If so, the benefit could be reciprocal, according to the researchers. the trees and plants associate with,” she said. Soil fungi have a Buffering the fungi from climate change preserves their function, variety of relationships with woodland plants. Saprotrophic fungi, which could, in turn, conserve their host trees’ function in the face for instance, decompose dead organic matter, while pathotrophs of a changing California woodland ecosystem. eat live organic matter. More work would need to be done to understand how far this And then there are the symbiotrophs, which engage in mutually buffering effect would extend, but the results are a positive bit of beneficial relationships with their plant hosts via their roots. At- cont. on page 5 MEMBERSHIP MEETING Marion Richards Spore Prints Our speaker for December will be Patrick is published monthly, September through June by the Leacock, PhD. We will be again offering PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY the meeting through Zoom. The link will be Center for Urban Horticulture, Box 354115 accessible and open to the public on January University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195 12, 2020 at 7:30 pm PST. We will open the (206) 522-6031 http://www.psms.org meeting around 7:00 pm so folks can mingle. The meeting will be held to 100 attendees, 2019–2021 OFFICERS: Randy Richardson, President first come. The link will be available on the Patrick Leacock [email protected] homepage at www.psms.org. Marion Richards, Vice President2020–2022 Brenda Fong, Treasurer2020–2022 The topic of the meeting will be “Fungi in the Tree of Life.” Our [email protected] understanding of fungi and relationships of all life continues to Luise Asif, Secretary2019–2021 yield new insights. Poorly understood mushrooms and molds, once [email protected] treated as plants, gained status as “The Fifth Kingdom,” which is more closely related to animals. We will look at how fungi TRUSTEES: 2020–2022: fit into the total tree of all life and the new Domains and Super Hans Drabicki, Marian Maxwell, Groups that try to organize these relationships. Kingdom Fungi Marcus Sarracino, Milton Tam, has a diverse array of life forms, and new cryptic micro-fungi Anne Tarver have been discovered. 2019–2021: Patrick Leacock is a mycologist documenting the mushrooms of Derek Hevel, Debbie Johnson, the Chicago region with collections going to the Field Museum of Scott Maxwell, Erin O’Dell, Natural History. He teaches botany and mycology at the School Molly Swesey-Watts of the Art Institute of Chicago. He assists on forays as a scientific advisor for the Illinois Mycological Association. He started his ALTERNATE: Parker Olson mushroom activities with the Minnesota Mycological Society IM. PAST PRES: before moving to Chicago. Patrick is also active with the North American Mycological Association and served as Voucher Coordi- SCI. ADVISOR: Dr. Steve Trudell nator for 20 years. Visit Patrick’s website at www.mycoguide.com. EDITOR: Agnes A. Sieger, 271 Harmony Lane, Port Angeles, WA 98362 [email protected] PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Randy Richardson As we look forward to the end of this long CALENDAR tunnel, some months hence, I optimistically expect a vigorous blooming of energy and en- Jan. 12 Membership meeting, 7:30 pm, via Zoom thusiasm. Many thanks to all the members and Nominations close volunteers who have helped the club get through Jan. 18 Board meeting, 7:30 pm, via Zoom these times as well as we have; onlookers are impressed at how well PSMS has adapted and Jan. 19 Spore Prints deadline carried on. Here’s hoping everyone can stay well, and keep finding the pa- BOARD NEWS Luise Asif tience to wait this out, so that we can enjoy together re-entering the fungal jungle, seeking and learning, in person once again. Wishing our members the very best for this New Year! Correction to last month’s article relating to the Burke Endowment for a permanent Ph. D-level Research Mycologist position. It is the Young Family Foundation that pledged $10,000 and is part- ALGAE-FARMING FISH DOMESTICATE TINY nering with PSMS to provide the $20,000 matching fund for the SHRIMP TO HELP RUN THEIR FARMS William Feeney & Rohan Brooker campaign. Apology to Joanne Young and the Young Foundation https://theconversation.com/, Dec. 7, 2020 for the error. Pacita Roberts and Marian Maxwell have worked hard to redirect Humans are experts at domesticating other species, and our world PSMS members and the PSMS board discussion groups from would be unrecognizable without it. There would be no cities, Yahoo to message groups through the PSMS website. Thank you no supermarkets, and no pets. Domestication is a special kind of for your hard work. cooperative relationship, where one species provides prolonged The Nominating Committee is accepting nominations through support in exchange for a predictable resource. January 12. Contact Marian at outreach[at]psms.org. Needed are While humans have domesticated various plants and animals, these five trustees who serve for 2 years. relationships are surprisingly rare in other species. It’s true some page 2 insects (ants, beetles, and termites among them) domesticate fungi, One question remained: do the mysid shrimps provide a benefit but few other examples exist outside the insect world. to the longfin damselfish? In our new study, we describe what appears to be first example of Given the damselfish eat the algae they farm, we thought maybe a non-human vertebrate domesticating another animal. by hovering above the farm, the mysid shrimps waste might act as fertilizer. To test this, we examined the quality of the algae within farms that did, or did not have mysid shrimps.