Occurrence of macrofungi on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, southern India

S. Mani ¹ & V. Kumaresan ²

¹ Pitchandikulam BioresourceCentre, Auroville, Tamil Nadu 605101, India

²Department of Plant Science, Tagore Arts College, Puducherry 605008, India

Email: ¹ manitrees@yahoo.com; ² vkumaresan36@yahoo.com

Date of online publication 26 January 2009

ISSN 0974-7907 (online) | 0974-7893 (print)

Editor: V.B. Hosagoudar

Manuscript details:

Manuscript # o1773; Received 03 May 2007; Final revised received 23 July 2008;

Finally accepted 02 August 2008

Citation: Mani, S. & V. Kumaresan(2009). Occurrence of macrofungi on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, southern India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 1(1): 54-57.

Copyright: © S. Mani & V. Kumaresan2009. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any medium for non-profit purposes, reproduction and distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.

Acknowledgements: We wish to dedicate this manuscript to our late Prof. K. Natarajanfor his outstanding contribution to Indian Mycology.

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Introduction

Fungi are key functional components of forest ecosystems (Brown et al.2006) and they have received less attention than animals and plants, although they are omnipresent and highly diverse in nature (Piepenbring2007). Many macrofungalspecies are believed to fruit sporadically, with no consistent pattern of occurrence from year to year (Watling 1995). Moreover, their sporocarpsare ephemeral and even when produced, may last only a few days before decomposing or being eaten (Brown et al. 2006). Having a stable and accepted estimate of taxonomic diversity for fungi is also necessary to enable fungi to be included in considerations of biodiversity conservation, land-use planning and management (Mueller & Schmit 2007). In southern India, taxonomy of agarics has been carried out in the Western Ghats region (Natarajanet al. 2005a,b), but so far there are no reports on the study of macrofungal diversity in tropical dry evergreen forests. Thus, the aim of this study was to generate a baseline data on macrofungaldiversity in the tropical dry evergreen forests on the Coromandel Coast of peninsular India.

Materials and Methods

The present study was conducted in one man-made forest and two naturally occurring forests. All the sites were within 25km and were located on the Coromandel Coast of Tamil Nadu, southern India. The man made PitchandikulamForest (PF) (11⁰59’N & 79⁰49’E) is a well protected in 30ha of land having restored mixed forest. Reforestation programmes began in 1973 by planting exotics, Acacia auriculiformis and Eucalyptus globulus and later there has been a significant shift in priority for restoring the indigenous tropical dry evergreen forest species (Ramanujam& Anbarasan 2007).

The other two sites Oorani (OR) (12⁰11’N & 79⁰57’E, 1.5ha) and Puthupet(PP) (12⁰03’N & 79⁰52’E, 12ha) are naturally occurring in this part and are described as tropical dry evergreen forests (Champion & Seth 1968). These sites are two to three layered forests occurring in drier areas, that experience about 3-6 dry months in a year, tree boles are mostly 8-12m in height, harbor largely evergreen species with a few deciduous and brevi-deciduous species and also a considerable number of lianas. It is mainly composed of Pterospermum canescens, Diospyros ebenum, Drypetes sepiaria, Garcinia spicata, Lepisanthes tetraphylla, Memecylon umbellatum and Eugenia bracteata (Venkateswaran & Parthasarathy2003; Parthasarathy & Karthikeyan1997). These sites occur presently in the form of ‘temple forests’ or ‘sacred groves’ and are disturbed by temple visitors. However, the Oorani site is comparatively less disturbed.

The present study was carried out during the rainy season between October 2006 - January 2007, the most favourable season for fruit body production. Macrofungal fruit bodies were collected once in a week from all the three sites. In the cases where fungi were not identified up to the species level, numbers were given to differentiate species belonging to the same genera after the study.

Results and Discussion

A total of 39 species of macrofungi, belonging to 25 genera in 17 families were recorded in the three study sites (Table 1). Twenty-eight species were enumerated in site PF, 20 species in site OR and 16 species in site PP. The species richness was high in site PF as the areal extent is more when compared to other two sites. Of the 39 species, 9 species (23%) including Agaricus sp.1, Coprinus sp.1, Ganoderma lucidum, Gymnopilussp., Marasmius sp.1, Marasmius sp. 2, Stereumsp., Termitomyces sp.1 and Xylaria sp.1 were common to all the three sites (Table 2). This could be due to the fact that all the three sites have similar vegetation type influencing the macrofungal species composition; it is known that vegetation type influences the fungal species composition (Runge1964). However, 23 species were unique to any one of the sites showing some degree of specificity for the sites (Table 2). But, a caveat needs to be added here since the sites compared are not of equal area and the number of sampling times is limited. Straatsmaet al. (2001) monitored a plot area of 1500m² in western Switzerland for agarics for over a period of 21-years with sampling frequency of 7 days and recorded 408 species but concluded that the number of species would increase if the survey continued.

The species occurring on different substrates varied considerably across the sites (Table 1). Most of the macrofungalspecies were recorded from soil (50.8%), whereas only 9.5% of the species occurred in litter. This poor representation of litter fungi could be due to a more open canopy of the forests consequently leading to higher light levels, higher temperature and lower humidity. These environmental differences may have contributed to low sporocarpproduction (Brown et al. 2006). This baseline survey provides useful information on the occurrence and distribution of macrofungal species, particularly in the tropical dry evergreen forests.

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