O/T Climate change fruitful for fungi

[Guest guest]

Climate change fruitful for fungi

By Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6524013.stm

Big mover

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A remarkable father-and-son research project has revealed how rising

temperatures are affecting fungi in southern England.

Fungus enthusiast Gange amassed 52,000 sightings of mushroom

and toadstools during walks around Salisbury over a 50-year period.

Analysis by his son Alan, published in the journal Science, shows

some fungi have started to fruit twice a year.

It is among the first studies to show a biological impact of warming

in autumn.

" My father was a stonemason, and his hobby was mycology, " recounted

Alan Gange, an ecology professor at Royal Holloway, University of

London.

I'm on top of the world, I can't quite believe it yet

Gange

" For 50 years of his life, he went out and recorded the appearance

of mushrooms and toadstools around Salisbury, and he also got his

friends in the local natural history group to bring back samples

they found when they were out walking.

" When he retired, he bought himself a computer, taught himself (the

database program) Excel, and typed in all these 52,000 records. "

Now Mr Gange senior finds his enthusiasm and diligence rewarded as a

named author on a paper in one of the two most eminent scientific

journals in the world.

" I'm on top of the world, I can't quite believe it yet, " he told the

BBC News website.

Strange fruit

The records included sightings of 315 species of mushrooms and

toadstools which appear in the autumn, being the seasonal fruiting

parts of fungi that live in the soil, on rotting wood or in tree

roots.

One of the changes Professor Gange turned up was that the autumnal

fruiting period has expanded. Some mushrooms and toadstools are

emerging earlier each year, others later, which he thinks are

responses to warmer temperatures and higher rainfall.

Late developer

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More spectacularly, he found that more than one third of the species

recorded have started to fruit twice per year. There was no record

of this before 1976; but since then, 120 species have shown an

additional fruiting in spring.

" I looked up the data on the average temperature for February in

southern England during the 1950s, and it was 3.5C, " he said.

" In the current decade it's 5.2C. We used to get cold days and

nights in February which caused fungi to be dormant; these days we

get very little of that. "

In recent years a significant number of studies have found changes

in species' behaviour during springtime apparently related to

climate change, with growing seasons starting earlier, and young

animals born in months which would, in previous years, have been too

cold.

This is one of the first studies to show a parallel trend in autumn.

After more than 50 years of observing the natural world,

Gange is convinced that the climate is changing - at least within a

30km radius of Salisbury - though he prefers to attribute the

warming to natural cycles rather than humanity's production of

greenhouse gases.

" When I was a lad, it was an absolutely categorical fact that Red

Admirals would not survive the winter, " he said.

" This year we saw them on 19 January. That's a heck of a change, and

it's not the only one. "

.Black-INTERNET@...