Abstract
Fungi are relatively understudied, particularly in terms of biogeographical patterns. We analyse whether there is a spatial correlation between macrofungi (Basidiomycota) and human population (both in terms of size and rate of change) in Italy’s regions. Although current fungal taxonomic richness increases with increasing number of inhabitants (censused in 1986 and 2006 and predicted for 2026) and with their density, these relationships are not significant when controlling for variations in area amongst regions. This result, along with other recent independent studies, suggests that the large-scale spatial correlation of people and species can be often explained by both variables correlating with a third factor such as area, habitat heterogeneity or energy availability. Macrofungal richness significantly increases with percentage of forest cover, but not with percentage of protected area, suggesting that the conservation of Italian fungi needs to be addressed also outside the current network of national and regional nature reserves. The absence of any significant association of the estimate of macrofungal taxa with human population change observed in the last and predicted for the next two decades implies that there is no current clear trend towards a change of the ratio between macrofungal taxa and human presence at this scale of analysis. Further work at a higher resolution is needed to assess the consequences for Italy’s fungal biodiversity of the abandonment of marginal land and the expansion of urbanized areas in regions of high environmental productivity.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the many people involved in the compilation of the Italian checklist of macrofungi, to H. Barriga, A. Chiarucci, K. Evans, K. Gaston, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, J. Klimach, E. Lewis, L. Pellis, A. Rodrigues, R. Russo, P. Warren, C. Weiss and H. Wood for their help, insight and discussion, to M. Johnson and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of the draft.
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Pautasso, M., Zotti, M. Macrofungal taxa and human population in Italy’s regions. Biodivers Conserv 18, 473–485 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-008-9511-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-008-9511-4