Biogeographic relationships between the macrofungi of temperate eastern Asia and eastern North America

Abstract

Eastern North America and temperate eastern Asia reportedly share a relatively high number of taxa of macrofungi (mushrooms and relatives), including a number of taxa that have putative eastern North America – temperate eastern Asia disjunct distributions. These reports have been used to imply an affinity between the mycota (fungal equivalent of flora and fauna) of the two regions. To date, however, this affinity has not been examined in detail. A comparison of north temperate macrofungal mycotas was undertaken to examine the similarity between these regions. We used two methods in this study: (i) direct comparison of taxon lists and (ii) calculation of the Simpson Coefficient of similarity from lists of selected taxa. These analyses were based on field work, herbarium records, and published taxonomic treatments for Amanita, Lactarius, Ramaria, and Boletaceae. Results of these analyses document that taxonomic similarity between eastern North America and temperate eastern Asia mycotas can be quite high. In all cases, the calculated similarity values for eastern North America – temperate eastern Asia comparisons are higher than those between either region of North America and Europe or between western North America and eastern Asia. Furthermore, the eastern North American and temperate eastern Asian disjunct distributions of macrofungi are usually limited to the level of species or lower. Key words: biogeography, China, disjunct distribution, macrofungi, North America, Simpson Coefficient.