A database of the global distribution of alien macrofungi.

Miguel Monteiro,César Capinha,Anna Schertler,Rui Figueira,Franz Essl,Luís Reino,Maria Teresa Ferreira

doi:10.3897/bdj.8.e51459

Abstract

BackgroundHuman activities are allowing the ever-increasing dispersal of taxa to beyond their native ranges. Understanding the patterns and implications of these distributional changes requires comprehensive information on the geography of introduced species. Current knowledge about the alien distribution of macrofungi is limited taxonomically and temporally, which severely hinders the study of human-mediated distribution changes for this taxonomic group.New informationHere, we present a database on the global alien distribution of macrofungi species. Data on the distribution of alien macrofungi were searched in a large number of data sources, including scientific publications, grey literature and online databases. The database compiled includes 1966 records (i.e. species x region combinations) representing 2 phyla, 7 classes, 22 orders, 82 families, 207 genera, 648 species and 31 varieties, forms or subspecies. Dates of introduction records range from 1753 to 2018. Each record includes the location where the alien taxon was identified and, when available, the date of first observation, the host taxa or other important information. This database is a major step forward to the understanding of human-mediated changes in the distribution of macrofungal taxa.

Highlights

We present the recently completed Global Alien Macrofungi Database, a database of distribution records of alien macrofungi aggregated from all relevant sources we could identify, namely publications, reports, databases on invasive alien species and citizen science observations
Macrofungi, i.e. fungi that exhibit macroscopic spore bearing structures, are an artificial group mostly comprised of ectomycorrhizal and saprotroph fungal species. Those are widely missing in alien invasive species databases, such as the CABI Invasive Species Compendium and Global Invasive Species Database, because their impacts on native biota are hard to assess and remain largely unknown (Desprez-Loustau 2009, Desprez-Loustau et al 2010,Vizzini et al 2009)
We approached selected mycologists via email. These experts were contacted and asked if they were aware of records of alien macrofungi or of data resources other than the ones we identified through online searches

Summary

Background

Human activities are allowing the ever-increasing dispersal of taxa to beyond their native ranges. Understanding the patterns and implications of these distributional changes requires comprehensive information on the geography of introduced species. Current knowledge about the alien distribution of macrofungi is limited taxonomically and temporally, which severely hinders the study of human-mediated distribution changes for this taxonomic group. We present a database on the global alien distribution of macrofungi species. Each record includes the location where the alien taxon was identified and, when available, the date of first observation, the host taxa or other important information. This database is a major step forward to the understanding of human-mediated changes in the distribution of macrofungal taxa

Introduction

Findings

Sampling methods