Induction of transient thermotolerance in Serpula lacrymans and S. himantioides following exposure to supraoptimal (sublethal) temperatures

Toward Modeling the Resistance and Resilience of "Below-ground" Fungal Communities: A Mechanistic and Trait-Based Approach

The role of fungi in shaping ecosystems is well evidenced and there is growing recognition of their importance among scientists and the general public. Establishing and separating the role of key local (soil chemical, biological, and physical properties) and global (climate, dispersal limitation) drivers in fungal community structure and functioning is currently a source of frustration to mycologists. The quest to determine niche processes and environmental characteristics shaping fungal community structure, known to be important for plant and animal communities, is proving difficult, resulting in the acknowledgment that niche neutral processes (climate, dispersal limitations) may dominate. The search for predictable patterns in fungal community structure may have been restricted as the "appropriate" scales at which to measure community structure and characterize the environment have not been fully determined yet, and the focus on taxonomy makes it difficult to link environmental characteristics to fungal traits. While key determinants of microbial community composition have been uncovered for some functional groups, the differential response of functional groups is largely unknown. Before we can truly understand what drives the development of microbial community structure, an understanding of the autecology of major fungal taxa and how they interact with their immediate environment (from the micro- up to kilometer scale) is urgently needed. Furthermore, key information and empirical data is missing at the microscale due to experimental difficulties in mapping this heterogeneous and opaque environment. We therefore present a framework that would help generate this much-needed empirical data and information at the microscale, together with modeling approaches to link the spatial and temporal scales. The latter is important as we propose that there is much to be gained by linking our understanding of fungal community responses across scales, in order to develop species and community-environment-function predictive models.

The relationship between 'wild' and 'building' isolates of the dry rot fungus Serpula lacrymans

Molecular and morphological parameters of Serpula lacrymans isolates from various sites in the built environment in Europe and Australia were compared to similar parameters of 'wild' isolates from India, the Sumava Mountains (Czech Republic) and Mount Shasta (USA). The Indian, Czech Republic and all of the building isolates bar one showed identity in both molecular and morphological features. The Australian and the USA isolates (BF-050 and USA'94 respectively) showed specific morphological differences and could be separated on the basis of randomly amplified polymorphic deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase chain reaction (RAPD PCR) with the USA isolate being least closely related to the S. lacrymans type strain of FPRL12C. ITS sequence data revealed two base differences between FPRL12C and BF-050 in the 673 sequenced, nine differences between FPRL12C and USA'94 and 16 differences between USA'94 and the closely related organism Serpula himantioides. The possible evolutionary relationships between the various isolates are discussed along with suggestions for the origin of S. lacrymans as a scourge of the built environment in many temperate areas of the world.