Myxomycetes of subantarctic Macquarie Island
Steven L. Stephenson A D , Gary A. Laursen B and Rodney D. Seppelt CA Department of Biological Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA.
B Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA.
C Australian Antarctic Division, Channel Highway, Kingston, Tas. 7050, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: slsteph@uark.edu
Australian Journal of Botany 55(4) 439-449 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT06169
Submitted: 13 August 2006 Accepted: 4 December 2006 Published: 20 June 2007
Abstract
Macquarie Island is an oceanic island located 1000 km south-east of Tasmania. The island, which lies close to but north of the Antarctic Convergence, is the southernmost island in the world with a fairly complete cover of vegetation. However, the vascular flora is impoverished and consists of only 46 species. During the period of late January to late April of 1995, 412 field collections of myxomycetes, representing at least 22 species in 11 genera, were obtained during the course of an intensive survey of fungal biodiversity on Macquarie Island. Moist-chamber cultures prepared with various types of plant debris yielded only 14 collections, but this total included three additional species and two additional genera. All but four of the species we recorded from the island are new records for the South Polar Region. Most field collections were associated with Stilbocarpa polaris (Araliaceae) and Pleurophyllum hookeri (Asteraceae), the usual dominants in the herbfield communities that commonly occur on upper beach slopes and coastal terraces. Trichia verrucosa (80 collections), Diderma alpinum (78) and Craterium leucocephalum (59) were the most consistently abundant myxomycetes. Other species represented by ≥15 collections were Didymium cf. dubium, Collaria lurida, Lamproderma arcyrioides and Didymium macquariense. The latter is a species new to science that was described from material collected during the present study. All of the species of myxomycetes now known to occur on Macquarie Island are members of the Trichiales, Physarales, Stemonitales or Echinosteliales; no member of the Liceales or Ceratiomyxales was ever collected.
Acknowledgements
This project was funded in part by two grants (INT-9215273 and DEB-0316284) from the National Science Foundation. The logistical support provided by the Australian Antarctic Division is gratefully acknowledged. Permission to work on Macquarie Island was granted by the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service. We thank David W. Mitchell for his valuable comments relating to several of the collections reported herein, Clark T. Rogerson for identifying specimens of myxomyceticolous fungi, Margaret Hallam for providing the drawings used as the basis for Figs 2 and 3, and Gabriel Moreno for his SEM studies of Diderma alpinum and Didymium macquariense.
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