Ecological features and species diversity of epiphytic myxomycetes (Myxomycetes) on an ordinary pine (<i>Pinus sylvestris</i> L.) in the forest-steppe and steppe zones of the southeast of Western Siberia

Abstract

The species diversity and taxonomic structure of myxomycetes of the epiphytic-corticoid complex has been studied in pine forests on the Pinus sylvestris. The study area is located in the Asian part of Russia, in the southeast of the West Siberian Plain. Species diversity has been revealed using the classical method of moist-chambers, based on the presence in the life cycle of mucus staggering stages microcysts and sclerotia, from which, under certain favorable conditions, plasmodium and, later, fruit bodies sporocarpas may appear in the Petri dish. We selected 720 packages for the installation of moist-chambers between 2008 and 2016 in the study area. The experiments with moist-chambers were performed between 2008 and 2017. We received 361 samples of the myxomycetes. A sample is a colony of sporocarpas derived from a single plasmodium. As a result of taxonomic identification we received 28 species of Myxomycetes belonging to 5 orders, 7 families, and 13 genera on the pine bark. It is noted that 6 species of Myxomycetes develop on the pine bark, absent in the area of the study on the bark of other tree species Echinostelium fragile, Paradiacheopsis rigida, Physarum auriscalpium, Ph. mutabile, Stemonaria nannengae, Willkommlangea reticulata.