Myxomycetes appearing in moist chamber cultures on four different types of dead leaves

Abstract

One of the microhabitats available for myxomycetes in temperate forests is represented by the layer of dead plant material that accumulates on the forest floor. This layer, referred to as the litter layer, consists mostly of dead leaves from the trees that make up the forest canopy. In the present study, leaves from four different species of trees (dogwood, red maple, sycamore and white oak) were collected from the upper portion of the litter layer and used to prepare moist chamber cultures to determine whether each type of leaf displayed evidence of supporting a different ecological assemblage of myxomycetes. Leaves were collected on two occasions, January 2012 and January 2013. Forty moist chamber cultures were prepared for each type of leaf on each date, for a total of 320 cultures for the entire study. Most of these (60.6%) yielded some evidence (either sporocarps or plasmodia) of myxomycetes, and 21 species in nine genera were represented among the 244 records of sporocarps recorded from the cultures. Members of the order Physarales made up 59% of all records, with members of the orders Stemonitales (30%) and Trichiales (11%) relatively less important. Major differences existed in the productivity of the two sets of leaf samples (with 2013 appreciably more productive than 2012) and for particular types of leaves (with dogwood characterized by an overall positive value of 92.5% and sycamore with an overall positive value of only 11.5%). Remarkably, the set of samples of sycamore leaves collected in 2013 yielded no positive cultures.