First record of fungal diversity in the tropical and warm-temperate Middle Miocene Climate Optimum forests of Eurasia.

ROMERO C. INGRID; NUÑEZ OTAÑO N.B.; GIBSON E. MARTHA; SPEARS M. TYLER; FAIRCHILD JOLENE C. ; TARLTON LAIKIN; JONES SAVANNAH; BELKIN HARVEY E.; WARNY SOPHIE; POUND MATTHEW; O'KEEFE, JENNIFER M. K.

Frontiers in Forest and Global Change

Frontiers Media SA

Lugar: Lausanne; Año: 2021

2624-893X

The middle Miocene Climate Optimum (MMCO) was the warmest interval of the last23 million years and is one of the best analogs for proposed future climate changescenarios. Fungi play a key role in the terrestrial carbon cycle as dominant decomposersof plant debris, and through their interactions with plants and other organisms assymbionts, parasites, and endobionts. Thus, their study in the fossil record, especiallyduring the MMCO, is essential to better understand biodiversity changes and terrestrialcarbon cycle dynamics in past analogous environments, as well as to model futureecological and climatic scenarios. The fossil record also offers a unique long-term,large-scale dataset to evaluate fungal assemblage dynamics across long temporal andspatial scales, providing a better understanding of how ecological factors influencedassemblage development through time. In this study, we assess the fungal diversity andcommunity composition recorded in two geological sections from the middle Miocenefrom the coal mines of Thailand and Slovakia. We used presence-absence data toquantify the fungal diversity of each locality. Spores and other fungal remains wereidentified to modern taxa whenever possible; laboratory codes and fossil names wereused when this correlation was not possible. This study represents the first of its kindfor Thailand, and it expands existing work from Slovakia. Our results indicate a totalof 281 morphotaxa. This work will allow us to use modern ecological data to makeinferences about ecosystem characteristics and community dynamics for the studiedregions. It opens new horizons for the study of past fungal diversity based on modernfungal ecological analyses. It also sheds light on how global variations in fungal speciesrichness and community composition were affected by different climatic conditionsand under rapid increases of temperature in the past to make inferences for the nearclimatic future.