Abstract
Air sampling was conducted in Szczecin (Poland) throughout April–September 2013. The final data set included 177 daily and 4248 hourly samples. The total of 21 types of spores, which occurred in a number >10 in the season, were taken into account. The following meteorological parameters were analyzed: air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and wind speed. Effects of individual weather parameters on hourly and daily concentrations of different fungal spore types were examined using Spearman’s rank association test, whereas effects of complex of meteorological factors on hourly and daily compositions of spore were assessed using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA). Airborne fungal spore distribution patterns in relation to meteorological variables were determined by RDA, after DCA results detected a linear structure of the spore data. The RDA results obtained indicated that all the applied variables accounted for 20 and 22% of the total variance in the hourly and daily spore data, respectively. The results of stepwise forward selection of variables revealed all included hourly and daily meteorological variables were statistically significant. The largest amount of the total variance in the spore composition was explained by the air temperature in both cases (16%). Multivariate ordination did not show large differences between the hourly and daily relationships (with exception of wind speed impact), while the differences between simple hourly and daily correlations were more clear. Correlations between daily values of variables were in most cases higher than between hourly values of variables.
Highlights
The spores of many fungi are displaced from their parent colonies by passive mechanisms—by physical disturbance resulting from airflow, raindrops, vibration, or by the specific vectors
Active mechanisms of spore discharge are powered by hydrostatic pressure, fast movements induced by cytoplasmic dehydration, and by the utilization of surface tension force
We took into account 21 types of spores, which occurred in a number \10 in the season, and that we were able to identify at the level of genus: Agrocybe, Alternaria, Chaetomium, Cladosporium, Coprinus, Curvularia, Didymella, Drechslera type, Epicoccum, Fusarium, Ganoderma, Leptosphaeria type, Periconia, Phaeosphaeria, Pithomyces, Pleospora, Polythrincium, Stachybotrys, Stemphylium, Tilletia, Torula
Summary
The spores of many fungi are displaced from their parent colonies by passive mechanisms—by physical disturbance resulting from airflow, raindrops, vibration, or by the specific vectors (e.g., insects and birds). Active mechanisms of spore discharge are powered by hydrostatic pressure, fast movements induced by cytoplasmic dehydration, and by the utilization of surface tension force. Most Basidiomycota utilize the process of ballistospore discharge, which is powered by the rapid motion of a fluid droplet over the spore surface (Ingold 1971, 1999; Pringle et al 2005). The function of spore discharge is to free spores, which may subsequently be dispersed. When spores are puffed and splashed from the surfaces of their colonies by rain water drops, the impact of raindrops exerts much larger forces on colonies than wind disturbance. Spores can be thrown over short distances or can be carried over longer distances by wind as free spores or associated with water droplets. Dispersal can occur a distance from a few centimeters to hundreds of kilometers, even between continents (Ingold 1971; Carlile et al 2001)
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