PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 26: Soil Fungi
Monday, August 8, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 518 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Is sporocarp stoichiometry a window into ectomycorrhizal fungal community functional diversity?
Lilleskov, Erik*,1, Fahey, Timothy2, 1 USDA Forest Service, Houghton, MI, USA2 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
ABSTRACT- Ectomycorrhizal fungi differ in their response to nitrogen (N) deposition. We explored whether taxa that differed in their response to N deposition also differed in the nutrient chemistry of their sporocarps. Sporocarp chemistry is a function of a number of variables, including element availability, element uptake rates, the portion of that element retained by the fungus vs. transferred to the host, and the portion of the element translocated to sporocarps. We expected high and low N site dominants to differ in the balance of these processes as N availability changed, resulting in significantly different patterns of sporocarp chemistry among taxa across the gradient. We analyzed sporocarps for N, P, cations and micronutrients. We found significant differences among the taxa in their patterns of element distribution and stoichiometric relationships. At present it is impossible to distinguish among the different mechanisms leading to these differences, but we propose alternate testable hypotheses for these patterns.
Key words: ectomycorrhizal fungi, Cortinarius, Lactarius theiogalus, Laccaria bicolor