Surveying wood-inhabiting fungi: Most molecularly detected polypore species form fruit-bodies within short distances

Abstract

Abstract In ecological and biodiversity research, fungal species are traditionally recorded using fruit body sampling, which underestimates mycelial presence of species. We hypothesized that fruit body based species lists are increasingly complete in larger sampling units where fruit bodies can be detected across multiple mycelial occurrences. We compared molecular records (detected with Illumina high-throughput sequencing) and records of fruit bodies of polypores in Estonian wetland pine forests. Of all molecularly detected polypores, 75% were present as conspecific fruit bodies within 30 m (including 24% on the same tree). This distance varied little among study sites. Despite lower costs, fruit body surveys yielded 60 polypore species, while sequencing only detected 13 species. Fruit body surveys of selected macrofungi can be thus efficient for biodiversity assessments. However, combining such surveys with high-throughput sequencing can add a broad description of the whole fungal assemblage even with limited samples (616 OTUs from 30 downed trunks in our study).