Exploring the Species Diversity of Edible Mushrooms in Yunnan, Southwestern China, by DNA Barcoding.

Ying Zhang,Jianping Xu,Yang Cao,Pengfei Wang,Fei Mi,Liu Yang,Chunli Liu,Xiaozhao Tang,Meizi Mo

doi:10.3390/jof7040310

Ying Zhang, Jianping Xu + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/jof7040310

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Abstract

Yunnan Province, China, is famous for its abundant wild edible mushroom diversity and a rich source of the world’s wild mushroom trade markets. However, much remains unknown about the diversity of edible mushrooms, including the number of wild edible mushroom species and their distributions. In this study, we collected and analyzed 3585 mushroom samples from wild mushroom markets in 35 counties across Yunnan Province from 2010 to 2019. Among these samples, we successfully obtained the DNA barcode sequences from 2198 samples. Sequence comparisons revealed that these 2198 samples likely belonged to 159 known species in 56 different genera, 31 families, 11 orders, 2 classes, and 2 phyla. Significantly, 51.13% of these samples had sequence similarities to known species at lower than 97%, likely representing new taxa. Further phylogenetic analyses on several common mushroom groups including 1536 internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences suggested the existence of 20 new (cryptic) species in these groups. The extensive new and cryptic species diversity in wild mushroom markets in Yunnan calls for greater attention for the conservation and utilization of these resources. Our results on both the distinct barcode sequences and the distributions of these sequences should facilitate new mushroom species discovery and forensic authentication of high-valued mushrooms and contribute to the scientific inventory for the management of wild mushroom markets.

Highlights

Fungi make up a remarkably diverse kingdom in terrestrial ecosystems and establish important interactions with plants and animals
Multiple specimens of each morphological species were obtained at all sites
Sequence the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions, we in about fourstudy, times with of thethe mushroom species numberinformation as that wasatrecognized by locals found about four times of the mushroom species number as that was recognized by locals markets across Yunnan Province in southwestern China

Summary

Introduction

Fungi make up a remarkably diverse kingdom in terrestrial ecosystems and establish important interactions with plants and animals. Despite recent progress in fungal systematics and taxonomy [1,2,3,4], less than 5% of the estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million species of extant fungi have been described [5]. With the development of metagenome sequencing and other culture-independent methods, an average 7.8–8.8 times of fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) have been discovered versus that of culture-dependent methods, resulting in an estimated range of the total fungal diversity to about 12 million (11.7–13.2) species [6]. A conservative estimate based on ITS2 metabarcoding suggested a total of about 6.28 million fungal species [7]. A number of diagnostic tools based on sequence variations have been developed for important groups of fungi [13,14,15]

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