Lynne Boddy

• Cardiff University

Phenotypic plasticity (i.e. the ability of a genotype to alter its phenotype in response to environmental changes) can play a crucial role in maximizing fitness in fluctuating environments. However, plasticity comes at a cost, as the energy required to transform a phenotype imposes limits on its extent. While limits to plasticity are well-documente...

Hymenoscyphus fraxineus is an introduced ascomycete fungus which causes ash dieback and has resulted in widespread mortality of ash throughout Europe. Although H. fraxineus has been present on the continent for at least four decades, it was not identified until 2006. The first record of the pathogen in Britain came in 2012 although it was probably...

Heterotrophic soil microorganisms are responsible for ~50% of the carbon dioxide released by respiration from the terrestrial biosphere each year. The respiratory response of soil microbial communities to warming, and the control mechanisms, remains uncertain, yet is critical to understanding the future land carbon (C)‐climate feedback. Individuals...

Wood decomposing fungi differ in their substrate affinities, but to what extent factors like wood properties influence host specialization, compared to climate, is largely unknown. In this study, we analysed British field observations of 61 common wood decay species associated with 41 tree and shrub genera. While white rot fungi ranged from low-to...

Wood decay fungi are considered to be dispersed by wind, but dispersal by animals may also be important, and more so in managed forests where dead wood is scarce. We investigated whether beetles could disperse spores of the keystone species Fomitopsis pinicola. Beetles were collected on sporocarps and newly felled spruce logs, a favourable habitat...

Colonization of terrestrial environments by filamentous fungi relies on their ability to form networks that can forage for and connect resource patches. Despite the importance of these networks, ecologists rarely consider network features as functional traits because their measurement and interpretation are conceptually and methodologically difficu...

The climate of maritime Antarctica has altered since the 1950s. However, the effects of increased temperature, precipitation and organic carbon and nitrogen availability on the fungal communities inhabiting the barren and oligotrophic fellfield soils that are widespread across the region are poorly understood. Here, we test how warming with open to...

Recent global warming affects species compositions at an unprecedented rate. To predict climate‐induced changes in species assemblages, a better understanding of the link between species occurrence and climate is needed. Macrofungal fruit body assemblages are correlated with the thermal environment at the European scale. However, it is still unknow...

Recent global warming affects species compositions at an unprecedented rate. To predict climate-induced changes in species assemblages, a better understanding of the link between species occurrence and climate is needed. Macrofungal fruit body assemblages are correlated with the thermal environment at the European scale. However, it is still unknow...

During decomposition of organic matter, microbial communities may follow different successional trajectories depending on the initial environment and colonizers. The timing and order of the species arrival (assembly history) can lead to divergent communities through priority effects. We explored how assembly history and resource quality affected fu...

Wood decay fungi are considered to be dispersed by wind, but dispersal by animals may also be important, and more so in managed forests where dead wood is scarce. We investigated whether beetles could disperse spores of the keystone species Fomitopsis pinicola. Beetles were collected on sporocarps and newly felled spruce logs, a favourable habitat...

Biological communities within living organisms are structured by their host's traits. How host traits affect biodiversity and community composition is poorly explored for some associations, such as arthropods within fungal fruit bodies. Using DNA metabarcoding, we characterized the arthropod communities in living fruit bodies of 11 wood-decay fungi...

During decomposition of organic matter, microbial communities may follow different successional trajectories depending on the initial environment and colonizers. The timing and order of the assembly history can lead to divergent communities through priority effects. We explored how assembly history and resource quality affected fungal dead wood com...

Decaying wood and cavities in living trees are fundamental determinants of forest biodiversity.However, a long history of forestry and land-use change has created a fragmented network ofwoodland with a depleted stock of veteran trees that support these microhabitats. Decomposition isa slow process and it may take heart-rot fungi hundreds of years t...

Hollows of veteran trees (i.e., rot holes) provide habitat for many rare and threatened saproxylic invertebrates. Rot holes are highly heterogeneous, particularly in terms of substrate and microclimate conditions. There is, however, a dearth of information regarding the differences in biological communities inhabiting rot holes with different envir...

Biological communities within living organisms are structured by their host's traits. How host traits affect biodiversity and community composition is poorly explored for some associations, such as arthropods within fungal fruit bodies. Using DNA metabarcoding, we revealed the arthropod communities in living fruit bodies of eleven wood-decay fungi...

Decomposition of lignin‐rich wood by fungi drives nutrient recycling in woodland ecosystems. Fluctuating abiotic conditions are known to promote the functioning of ecological communities and ecosystems. In the context of wood decay, fluctuating temperature increases decomposition rates. Metabolomics, in tandem with other ‘omics tools, can highlight...

As human beings, behaviours make up our everyday lives. What we do from the moment we wake up to the moment we go back to sleep at night can all be classified and studied through the concepts of behavioural ecology. The same applies to all vertebrates and, to some extent, invertebrates. Fungi are, in most people’s eyes perhaps, the eukaryotic multi...

Temperatures approaching or exceeding 20 °C have been measured during summer in polar regions at the surfaces of barren fellfield soils under cloudless skies around solar noon. However, despite the upper temperature limit for the growth of cold‐adapted microbes – which are abundant in polar soils and have pivotal roles in nutrient cycling – typical...

The space in which organisms live determines health and physicality, shaping the way in which they interact with their peers. Space, therefore, is critically important for species diversity and the function performed by individuals within mixed communities. The biotic and abiotic factors defined by the space that organisms occupy are ecologically s...

Individual‐level traits mediate interaction outcomes and community structure. It is important, therefore, to identify the minimum number of traits that characterise ecological networks, that is, their ‘minimum dimensionality’. Existing methods for estimating minimum dimensionality often lack three features associated with increased trait numbers: a...

1. The decreasing number of veteran trees in Europe threatens old-growth habitats and the fauna they support. This includes rare taxa, such as the violet click beetle, Limoniscus violaceus (Müller, 1821). 2. Samples of wood mould were taken from all beech trees in Windsor Forest previously confirmed to have contained L. violaceus larvae, and from t...

Theory predicts that the energetic cost of competition between fungal mycelia might accelerate or retard the rate of wood decomposition, depending on various factors. To evaluate the effect of occupied territory on wood decay rate and competitive outcome, we set up a pairing competition experiment using beech wood blocks colonised by three brown-ro...

Certain bacteria are capable of migrating along fungal hyphae, using them as a dispersal mechanism to cross otherwise-prohibitory distances. Three strains of fungal-migratory Paraburkholderia were isolated from the mycelium of wood-decay fungi, and inoculated onto ten strains of wood-decay fungi growing on solid agar medium. Two of the three bacter...

Species’ traits mediate ecological interaction outcomes and community structure. It is important, therefore, to identify the minimum number of traits required to characterise observed networks, i.e. the ‘minimum dimensionality’. Existing methods for estimating minimum dimensionality often lack three features commonly associated with a higher number...

Unlike for many other organism groups, conservation translocations of fungi are still rare. Encouraged by recent successful translocations, there is a growing interest in applying this conservation tool to threatened wood-inhabiting fungi. When combined with other conservation or restoration measures, translocation can be an effective measure for p...

The recent demonstrations that widespread mid-Palaeozoic Prototaxites and other nematophytes had fungal affinities indicate that terrestrial fungi were important elements in carbon cycling in the Early Devonian. Here, we provide evidence for their participation in the recycling of nutrients by early terrestrial invertebrates. Evidence is in the for...

The earliest stages of bacterial colonisation of wood have received little attention, particularly with respect to how the colonisation process may be affected by the presence of wood-decay fungi. This study used 16s rRNA gene sequencing to examine the bacterial community in wood that had been incubated in the field for 14 or 84 d, either in wood u...

Saprotrophic cord-forming basidiomycetes, with their mycelial networks at the soil/litter interface on the forest floor, play a major role in wood decomposition and nutrient cycling/relocation. Many studies have investigated foraging behaviour of their mycelium, but there is little information on their intelligence. Here, we investigate the effects...

Predicting fungal community dynamics requires methods combining theory with experiments. Different elements of spatial competition influence interaction outcomes, and consequently community dynamics. Despite the literature on such elements, no theoretical study has tested the predictability of dynamics with models incorporating these elements. We a...

p>Thermal melanism theory states that dark-colored ectotherm organisms are at an advantage at low temperature due to increased warming. This theory is generally supported for ectotherm animals, however, the function of colors in the fungal kingdom is largely unknown. Here, we test whether the color lightness of mushroom assemblages is related to cl...

The terrestrial carbon cycle is largely driven by photosynthetic plants and decomposer organisms that process biomass to CO2. In forest ecosystems, the decomposers are predominantly wood decay fungi, and the response of community structure and activity to increasing global temperatures is likely critical to forest biogeochemical processes. Metaboli...

Aim It is unknown whether fungi show similar trends to other organisms in their macroecological patterns of abundance and spatial distribution. Here, we investigated fungal abundance–occupancy relationships to determine whether fungi that are common at a local scale tend to be more widely distributed. Location UK and Switzerland. Time period 1950...

Premise of the Study Fungal diversity (richness) trends at large scales are in urgent need of investigation, especially through novel situations that combine long‐term observational with environmental and remotely sensed open‐source data. Methods We modeled fungal richness, with collections‐based records of saprotrophic (decaying) and ectomycorrhi...

APPENDIX S3. Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) for multiple comparisons in the types of dynamic land‐cover (ISAM‐HYDE), and whether there is a significant difference in ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity. The significant differences are shaded by values less than 0.05 (orange) or 0.01 (red).

APPENDIX S6. The full, initial model output during backward selection processing to predict species richness of saprotrophic fungi.

APPENDIX S4. Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) for multiple comparisons in the types of dynamic land‐cover, and whether there is a significant difference in ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity. The significant differences are shaded by values less than 0.05 (orange) or 0.01 (red).

APPENDIX S10. The intermediate model output, with one covariate for each environmental group, for backward selection predicting species richness of ectomycorrhizal fungi.

APPENDIX S12. The patterns of the environmental covariate gradients of the data (shaded) are visible as used to predict richness (isolines) of saprotrophic fungi in central to northern Europe. All values are scaled. Lower values are lighter, grading to higher values that are darker.

APPENDIX S13. The patterns of the environmental covariate gradients of the data (shaded) are visible as used to predict richness (isolines) of ectomycorrhizal fungi in central to northern Europe. All values are scaled. Lower values are lighter, grading to higher values that are darker.

APPENDIX S1. Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) for multiple comparisons in the types of dynamic land‐cover (ISAM‐HYDE), and whether there is a significant difference in saprotrophic fungal diversity. The significant differences are shaded by values less than 0.05 (orange) or 0.01 (red).

APPENDIX S5. Model specifications, as R script, used for model selection, for both forward and backward procedures. See Methods section for further information and details.

APPENDIX S8. Collinearity correlations, here including easting and northing, between the remaining covariates selected for the final consensus regression model, for saprotrophic fungi. See Methods for further details.

APPENDIX S2. Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) for multiple comparisons in the types of static land‐cover (CLC3), and whether there is a significant difference in saprotrophic fungal diversity. The significant differences are shaded by values less than 0.05 (orange) or 0.01 (red).

APPENDIX S7. The intermediate model output, with one covariate for each environmental group, for backward selection predicting species richness of saprotrophic fungi.

APPENDIX S11. Collinearity correlations, here including easting and northing, between the remaining covariates selected for the final consensus regression model, for ectomycorrhizal fungi. See Methods for further details.

APPENDIX S14. The mean and range in each of the explanatory variables connected to the fruiting records, for the final consensus model for saprotrophic fungi, between each of the land‐use types of the dynamic (ISAM‐HYDE) variable. All variables are scaled.

APPENDIX S9. The full, initial model output for backward selection predicting species richness of ectomycorrhizal fungi.

APPENDIX S15. The mean and range in each of the explanatory variables connected to the fruiting records, for the final consensus model for ectomycorrhizal fungi, between each of the land‐use types of the dynamic (ISAM‐HYDE) variable. All variables are scaled.

Reisolation data from the autumn sample collections from the paper 'Fungal control of early-stage bacterial community development in decomposing wood'. Columns 'B' and 'F' refer to unidentified bacteria and fungi, respectively. Code to reproduce the analysis is available at https://github.com/ecologysarah/time-series/blob/master/time-series_paper_a...

OTU table for the paper 'Fungal control of early-stage bacterial community development in decomposing wood'. The R markdown file to reproduce the analysis is available at: https://github.com/ecologysarah/time-series/blob/master/time-series_paper_analysis.Rmd

OTU table with taxonomy for the paper 'Fungal control of early-stage bacterial community development in decomposing wood'. An R markdown file to reproduce the analysis is available at https://github.com/ecologysarah/time-series/blob/master/time-series_paper_analysis.Rmd

Data on which wood samples bacteria could be succesfully amplfied from. This data is from the paper 'Fungal control of early-stage bacterial community development in decomposing wood', and code to reproduce the analysis is available at https://github.com/ecologysarah/time-series/blob/master/time-series_paper_analysis.Rmd

Functional traits are widely recognized as a useful framework for testing mechanisms underlying species community assemblage patterns and ecosystem processes. Functional trait studies in the plant and animal literature have burgeoned in the past 20 years, highlighting a need for standardized ways to measure ecologically meaningful traits across tax...

The bacterial communities in decomposing wood are receiving increased attention, but their interactions with wood-decay fungi are poorly understood. This is the first field study to test the hypothesis that fungi are responsible for driving bacterial communities in beech wood (Fagus sylvatica). A meta-genetic approach was used to characterise bacte...

Aim Macroecological scales of species compositional trends are well documented for a variety of plant and animal groups, but remain sparse for fungi, despite their ecological importance in carbon and nutrient cycling. It is, thus, essential to understand the composition of fungal assemblages across broad geographical scales and the underlying drive...

Community dynamics are mediated by species interactions, and within communities spatial heterogeneity and intransitive relationships promote coexistence. However, few experimental studies have assessed effects of heterogeneity on the interactions of competing individuals. Wood decay basidiomycete fungi are ideal for studying community structure and...

Here we assess the impact of geographically dependent (latitude, longitude and altitude) changes in bioclimatic (temperature, precipitation and primary productivity) variability on fungal fruiting phenology across Europe. Two main nutritional guilds of fungi, saprotrophic and ectomycorrhizal, were further separated into spring and autumn fruiters....

As citizen science and digitization projects bring greater and larger datasets to the scientific realm, we must address the comparability of results across varying sources and spatial scales. Independently assembled fungal fruit body datasets from Switzerland and the UK were available at large, national-scales and more intensively surveyed, local-s...

Understanding the mechanisms underlying wood decay basidiomycete community dynamics is crucial for fully understanding decomposition processes, and for modelling ecosystem function and resilience to environmental change. Competition drives community development in decaying woody resources, with interactions occurring at a distance, following physic...

Many organisms benefit from being pre-adapted to niches shaped by human activity, and have successfully invaded man-made habitats. One such species is the dry rot fungus Serpula lacrymans, which has a wide distribution in buildings in temperate and boreal regions, where it decomposes coniferous construction wood. Comparative genomic analyses and gr...

The aim of the current work was to identify key features of the fungal proteome involved in active decay of beech wood blocks, by the white rot fungus Bjerkandera adusta at 20°C and 24°C. A combination of protein and domain analyses ensured a high level of annotation, which revealed that while variation in the proteins identified was high between r...

Can experiments conducted in agar really help us to understand the complexity of fungal systems? This question has been the focus of persistent and ongoing debate between fungal ecologists that favor reductionist versus holistic approaches. On one hand, artificial media are unrealistic and fail to reflect the heterogeneity and complexity of natural...

Fungal community structure and development in decaying woody resources are largely dependent on interspecific antagonistic interactions that determine the distribution of territory - and hence the nutrients within - between different individuals occupying that resource. Interactions are mediated by antagonistic mechanisms, which determine the comba...

Despite the dramatic phenological responses of fungal fruiting to recent climate warming, it is unknown whether spatial distributions of fungi have changed and to what extent such changes are influenced by fungal traits, such as ectomycorrhizal (ECM) or saprotrophic lifestyles, spore characteristics, or fruit body size. Our overall aim was to under...

The Mycelium as a Network, Page 1 of 2 Abstract The characteristic growth pattern of fungal mycelia as an interconnected network has a major impact on how cellular events operating on a micron scale affect colony behavior at an ecological scale. Network structure is intimately linked to flows of resources across the network that in turn modify th...

Wood decay is performed by successions of a small, specialist group of fungi capable of decomposing lignocellulose. Decay community establishment begins in the woodland canopy where branches die but remain attached, often for several years before falling to the woodland floor. Formed initially by pioneer species, the community is capable of nutrien...

Supplementary data are available at FEMSEC online.

Understanding interspecific interactions is key to explaining and modelling community development and associated ecosystem function. Most interactions research has focused on pairwise combinations, overlooking the complexity of multispecies communities. This study investigated three-way interactions between saprotrophic fungi in wood and across soi...

Species occurrence observations are increasingly available for scientific analyses through citizen science projects and digitization of museum records, representing a largely untapped ecological resource. When combined with open-source data, there is unparalleled potential for understanding many aspects of the ecology and biogeography of organisms....

Wood decay is performed by successions of a small, specialist group of fungi capable of decomposing lignocellulose. Decay community establishment begins in the woodland canopy where branches die but remain attached, often for several years before falling to the woodland floor. Formed initially by pioneer species, the community is capable of nutrien...

There is a wide variety of plant diseases caused by fungi and fungus-like organisms. Plants have different constitutive and induced defence mechanisms, and differ in their susceptibility to different pathogens. Likewise, pathogens have different mechanisms of attack and responses to plant defence. Whether fungi have the ability to establish themsel...

Though there are mutualistic relationships between fungi and organisms from other kingdoms, none have yet been described for fungi in nature. Fungi engage in a range of aggressive interspecific interactions, which can occur at a distance or following contact, due to parasitism or production of volatile and diffusible chemicals, including enzymes, t...

Interactions between fungi and animals are very different from those with plants because both fungi and animals are heterotrophs. Fungi and their lifestyles are very diverse, and there is similarly broad diversity among animals, thus interactions between the two are many and varied. Interactions can be direct or indirect, and can be beneficial or d...

Fungal Ecology: Principles and Mechanisms of Colonization and Competition by Saprotrophic Fungi, Page 1 of 2 Abstract Decomposer fungi continually deplete the organic resources they inhabit, so successful colonization of new resources is a crucial part of their ecology. Colonization success can be split into (i) the ability to arrive at, gain ent...

The fungal community within dead wood has received considerable study, but far less attention has been paid to bacteria in the same habitat. Bacteria have long been known to inhabit decomposing wood, but much remains underexplored about their identity and ecology. Bacteria within the deadwood environment must interact with wood decay fungi, but aga...

Although climate change and variability can impact fungal phenology, the effects on community composition are less understood. Additionally, climatic variability might modify trait selection in fungi, including spore size and dispersal characteristics. Compositional and trait modifications of fungal communities would have important consequences for...

The fungal community within dead wood has received considerable study, but far less attention has been paid to bacteria in the same habitat. Bacteria have long been known to inhabit decomposing wood, but much remains underexplored about their identity and ecology. Bacteria within the dead wood environment must interact with wood-decay fungi, but ag...

Despite the critical importance of fungi as symbionts with plants, resources for animals, and drivers of ecosystem function, the spatiotemporal distributions of fungi remain poorly understood. The belowground life cycle of fungi makes it difficult to assess spatial patterns and dynamic processes even with recent molecular techniques. Here we offer...

Understanding the effects of changing abiotic conditions on assembly history in wood decay communities is especially important with predicted environmental changes. Interspecific interactions drive community development, so it is important to understand how microclimatic environment affects outcomes of interactions between species from different su...

Competition between mycelia of saprotrophic cord-forming basidiomycetes occurs both within dead woody resources and in the soil-litter interface, and involves a variety of antagonistic mechanisms including the production of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The antagonistic potential of VOC profiles from interactions in wood blocks and in soil mic...

Priority effects are known to have a major influence on fungal community development in decomposing wood, but it has not yet been established whether these effects are consistent between different geographical locations. Here, beech (Fagus sylvatica) wood disks that had been pre-colonised with three wood decay basidiomycetes were placed in seven wo...

The effort to describe assemblages of wood rotting fungi have focused almost exclusively on communities within substrata on the woodland floor yet the process of community development often starts in the canopy in branches still attached to standing trees. Due to priority effects, the identity of wood decay fungi that establish during these early s...

Terrestrial ecosystems are typically sustained by autochthonous primary producers, dominated by macrophytes, while small bodies of water depend heavily on leaves and twigs of allochthonous trees and shrubs. In addition, open waters allow growth of planktonic algae and bacteria. The relative scarcity of living macrophytes has inhibited the evolution...

Assemblages of wood rotting fungi often begin to develop in the canopy yet efforts to describe these communities have focused almost exclusively on substrata on the woodland floor. Furthermore, the spatial arrangement of saprotrophic fungal mycelia within their substrata has been investigated in only a handful of studies conducted over two decades...

Fungal species vary in the rate and way in which they decay wood. Thus, understanding fungal community dynamics within dead wood is crucial to understanding decomposition and carbon cycling. Mycelia compete for wood territory, by employing antagonistic mechanisms involving changes in morphology, and production of volatile and diffusible chemicals....

Assembly history of fungal communities has a crucial role in the decomposition of woody resources, and hence nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. However, it has not been clearly determined whether the fungal species that arrive first may, potentially, dictate the subsequent pathway of community development, that is, whether there is a priority...

The Fungi, Third Edition, offers a comprehensive and thoroughly integrated treatment of the biology of the fungi. This modern synthesis highlights the scientific foundations that continue to inform mycologists today, as well as recent breakthroughs and the formidable challenges in current research. The Fungi combines a wide scope with the depth of...