Improved interpretation of soil — macrofungal relations in south Swedish beech forests using two complementary regression analyses

Abstract

Two regression analyses were used to study how the absence/presence of fungi in south Swedish beech forest is related to topsoil and litter chemistry. Since many soil variables are correlated, each species was related to models of (1) the rotated principal components of the soil properties (as suggested by a previous study) and (2) the underlying primary variables. The study indicated that the two analyses are complementary and provide a mean for further interpretation of the results, since they consider different aspects of sporophore occurrence in relation to soil properties. One of the conclusions is that various litter variables, partly related to the mull/mor gradient, are of greater importance than indicated in a previous study.