Collaborative Research: MRA: Distributions of Macrofungi: Quantifying Ecosystem and Climate Drivers of Fungal Reproduction

真菌是全球陆地生态系统的重要组成部分。许多真菌以蘑菇的形式产生子实体。这些形成蘑菇的真菌是森林养分循环的关键，与植物有关，从有益的共生体到病原体。 然而，我们对区域、景观和当地因素（如火灾）如何结合联合收割机影响蘑菇形成物种的分布知之甚少，也不知道这些分布如何随着气候变化而变化。了解蘑菇的分布特别具有挑战性，因为这些真菌的大部分生命都是作为土壤下无性细胞（菌丝）的分支细丝度过的，只有当它们产生蘑菇时才知道它们的存在。最近的研究表明，一些真菌可能以菌丝的形式出现在已知范围之外数千公里的植物体内，这是基于它们的有性生殖（即，蘑菇）。真菌菌丝的这些扩展范围表明，不同的因素驱动了这些真菌的生命阶段的分布，使预测真菌将如何应对不断变化的环境的努力变得复杂。这项研究将通过将蘑菇收集与土壤，垃圾，植物组织和空气中的真菌DNA采样相结合，在八个不同州（AK，AZ，CO，FL，KS，NH，MN，OR）的研究地点，研究美国各地蘑菇形成真菌的分布。每个地点的信息，如气候，植物群落，火和土壤，然后将用于确定特定真菌能够有性繁殖的条件，以及它们只能作为菌丝生活的条件。该项目将把科学家与来自蘑菇俱乐部、当地学校和博物馆的1000多名社区成员联系起来，他们将参与收集蘑菇和利用真菌DNA进行科学研究。利用研究的广泛气候和地理范围，包括不同的植物群落和火灾干扰，我们将测试多个尺度的环境变量如何影响真菌有性和无性阶段的分布。我们还将确定真菌是否在一个阶段（例如，蘑菇）预测其在某一地点的其它基质中的出现（例如，土壤、空气或植物组织），从而改进真菌的取样方案。总之，这项研究将建立迄今为止最完整的大型真菌群落及其关系如何在气候梯度上变化的图景，从而建立预测气候变化下真菌分布和生态系统过程变化的能力。此外，近年来前所未有的火灾使火生态学前所未有地进入公众视野，因此扩大对火作为生物多样性和生态系统动态的神秘方面的驱动力的理解是及时的，具有广泛的兴趣。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Fungi are essential components of terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Many fungi produce fruiting bodies in the form of mushrooms. These mushroom-forming fungi are key to forest nutrient cycling and, in association with plants, range from beneficial symbionts to pathogens. Yet, we know very little about how regional, landscape, and local factors such as fire combine to affect the distributions of mushroom-forming species, nor how such distributions may be changing with a shifting climate. Understanding mushroom distributions is particularly challenging because these fungi spend most of their lives as branching filaments of asexual cells (hyphae) below the soil, and there presence only becomes known if and when they produce a mushroom. Recent work has shown that some fungi may occur as hyphae inside plants thousands of kilometers outside their known ranges, which are based on their sexual reproduction (i.e., mushrooms). These extended ranges of fungal hyphae suggest that different factors drive the distributions of life stages of these fungi, complicating efforts to forecast how fungi will respond to changing environments. This research will examine the distributions of mushroom-forming fungi across the United States by combining mushroom collections with sampling of fungal DNA in soils, litter, plant tissues, and the air, at study locations in eight different states (AK, AZ, CO, FL, KS, NH, MN, OR). Information at each site such as climate, plant communities, fire and soils will then be used to determine the conditions under which particular fungi are able to sexually reproduce and where they can only live as hyphae. The project will connect scientists with more than a thousand community members from mushroom clubs, local schools, and museums who will be involved in collecting mushrooms and working with fungal DNA for scientific purposes.Using the extensive climatic and geographic scope of the study, containing diverse plant communities and fire disturbances, we will test how environmental variables at multiple scales influence distributions of sexual and asexual stages of fungi. We will also determine whether occurrence of a fungus in one stage (e.g., mushrooms) is predictive of its occurrence in other substrates at a site (e.g., soils, air, or plant tissues), allowing improved sampling schemes for fungi. Together, this study will build the most complete picture to date of how macrofungal communities and their relationships change across climate gradients, thus building capacity to predict changes in fungal distributions and ecosystem processes under changing climate. Further, unprecedented fires in recent years have placed fire ecology in the public eye like never before, such that expanding understanding of fire as a driver of cryptic aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics is timely and of broad interest.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.