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Effects of land use on the fungal spore richness in small crater-lake basins of western Uganda

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Abstract

Mycological tools to estimate the effects of diverse land-use practices on fungal diversity are scarce, because of poor knowledge of the taxonomic diversity of tropical fungi and their response to anthropogenic habitat change. Here, we investigate assemblages of fungal spores, recently deposited in the bottom sediments of 24 small crater lakes in western Uganda, to assess the relationship between the local richness of fungi and environmental variation in the crater basin along regional gradients of natural vegetation and land use. We recovered ~9500 fungal spore specimens, which could be attributed to 216 morphotypes. Using an information-theoretic approach based on the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc), we determined the environmental factors which best explained variation in the diversity of fungal spores among three datasets: (i) the full set of 24 crater basins, (ii) the subset of 22 basins with freshwater lakes, and (iii) the subset of 17 basins partly or completely in agricultural use (cropland, fallow land, pasture and plantation). In these 17 human-impacted crater basins our results revealed a negative relationship between fungal spore richness and the areal fraction of basins in agricultural use. However, this detrimental effect of land use on fungal spore richness was not apparent across the full set of both disturbed and (presently) undisturbed basins. This was due to large variation in fungal spore richness among the undisturbed basins covered either with forest or savannah vegetation, probably resulting from site-specific controls on fungal habitat diversity, such as climatic moisture balance and the composition of natural and/or secondary vegetation. The land-use effects on fungal spore diversity, as documented in this study, suggest that communities of tropical fungi progressively exposed to land-use practices are threatened by species loss. Hence, our study demonstrates the need to develop conservation strategies mitigating the impacts of agriculture on the biodiversity of tropical fungi.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the ‘Science for a Sustainable Development’ programme of the Belgian Federal Science Policy (project SD/BD/03 CLANIMAE). The fieldwork was conducted with permission of the Uganda National Council of Science and Technology (NS 162) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA/TBDP/RES/50). We also benefited from additional sponsoring by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO Vlaanderen-Belgium) and the Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation (Belgium) for several field campaigns in 2007 and 2008. We thank Johnson Bwambale, Pierre-Denis Plisnier (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium), Christine Cocquyt (National Botanic Garden of Belgium), Bob Rumes and Julie Lebrun (Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Belgium) for field assistance, Martin Konert and Martine Hagen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) for sample preparation and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Vanessa Gelorini

    Present address: Research Unit Palaeontology, Department of Geology and Soil Sciences, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281/S8, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Limnology Unit, Department of Biology, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Vanessa Gelorini, Hilde Eggermont & Dirk Verschuren

  2. Research Group Mycology, Department of Biology, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Annemieke Verbeken

  3. Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Department of Biology, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Luc Lens

  4. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Freshwater Biology, Vautierstraat 29, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Hilde Eggermont

  5. Department of Geosciences, University of Aarhus, Hoegh Guldbergsgade 2, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Bent Vad Odgaard

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  1. Vanessa Gelorini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vanessa Gelorini.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Percent abundances of fungal-spore morphotypes (bars) recorded at each site, based on the fungal spore sum (204–1045 specimens) counted per sample. The type number of each morphotype is replaced by its percent abundance across all samples, expressed as a proportion of the total fungal spore sum (~9500 specimens).

figure 6figure 6

Appendix 2

Values of AICc (Akaike’s Information Criterion corrected for small sample size) of the multiple lineair regression candidate models, selected to estimate the land-use effects on EF200 for the three datasets: all basins, the freshwater lake basins only and the disturbed lakes only. Models considered to fit the data equally well (ΔAICc ≤ 2), are separated from the other candidate models by space; the most parsimonious models are highlighted in bold.

Fungal spore richness (EF200)

A. All crater basins and freshwater lake basins only

Dist=0,1; no interaction Dist*Hab possible

  • Model 1= Area Dist Hab Area*Hab Area*Dist

  • Model 2= Area Dist Hab Area*Dist

  • Model 3= Area Dist Hab Area*Hab

  • Model 4= Area Dist Hab

  • Model 5= Area Dist Area*Dist

  • Model 6= Area Hab Area*Hab

  • Model 7= Area Dist

  • Model 8= Area Hab

  • Model 9= Dist Hab

  • Model 10= Area

  • Model 11= Hab

  • Model 12= Dist

• All crater basins

Obs

Model

Parms

AICc

ΔAICc

Odds

Weight

Cum Weight

Variation (%)

1

10

3

171.6

0.00000

1.000

0.25942

0.25942

0.1

2

12

3

171.7

0.02040

1.010

0.25679

0.51622

0.03

3

11

3

171.7

0.02829

1.014

0.25578

0.77200

0.002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

7

4

174.5

2.89113

4.244

0.06112

0.83312

 

5

8

4

174.5

2.90326

4.270

0.06075

0.89388

 

6

9

4

174.5

2.90412

4.272

0.06073

0.95460

 

7

5

5

177.4

5.72751

17.527

0.01480

0.96940

 

8

4

5

177.7

6.10519

21.170

0.01225

0.98166

 

9

6

5

177.8

6.13079

21.443

0.01210

0.99376

 

10

2

6

181.0

9.33230

106.288

0.00244

0.99620

 

11

3

6

181.3

9.70497

128.058

0.00203

0.99822

 

12

1

7

181.6

9.96772

146.037

0.00178

1.00000

 

• Freshwater lake basins

Obs

Model

Parms

AICc

ΔAICc

Odds

Weight

Cum Weight

Variation (%)

1

12

3

151.2

0.00000

1.000

0.36595

0.36595

11

2

11

3

152.1

0.97263

1.626

0.22502

0.59097

7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

10

3

153.5

2.38856

3.301

0.11085

0.70182

 

4

7

4

153.8

2.63602

3.736

0.09795

0.79977

 

5

9

4

154.1

2.99009

4.460

0.08206

0.88183

 

6

8

4

154.8

3.59524

6.035

0.06064

0.94247

 

7

4

5

157.2

6.02845

20.373

0.01796

0.96043

 

8

5

5

157.2

6.03134

20.403

0.01794

0.97837

 

9

6

5

158.0

6.86169

30.903

0.01184

0.99021

 

10

3

6

160.3

9.10987

95.101

0.00385

0.99406

 

11

1

7

160.6

9.40385

110.159

0.00332

0.99738

 

12

2

6

161.0

9.87716

139.572

0.00262

1.00000

 

B. Disturbed crater basins

Dist replaced by Int; interaction Ant*Hab possible; no 3-way interaction

  • Model 1= Area Ant Hab Area*Hab Ant*Hab Area*Ant

  • Model 2= Area Ant Hab Area*Hab Area*Ant

  • Model 3= Area Ant Hab Area*Ant Ant*Hab

  • Model 4= Area Ant Hab Area*Hab Ant*Hab

  • Model 5= Area Ant Hab Area*Ant

  • Model 6= Area Ant Hab Area*Hab

  • Model 7= Area Ant Hab Ant*Hab

  • Model 8= Area Ant Hab

  • Model 9= Area Ant Area*Ant

  • Model 10= Area Hab Area*Hab

  • Model 11= Ant Hab Ant*Hab

  • Model 12= Area Ant

  • Model 13= Area Hab

  • Model 14= Ant Hab

  • Model 15= Area

  • Model 16= Hab

  • Model 17= Ant

Obs

Model

Parms

AICc

ΔAICc

Odds

Weight

Cum Weight

Variation (%)

1

17

3

110.5

0.0000

1.00

0.60415

0.60415

19

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

14

4

113.2

2.7290

3.91

0.15436

0.75851

 

3

12

4

113.9

3.4580

5.64

0.10721

0.86572

 

4

11

5

116.6

6.1532

21.68

0.02786

0.89358

 

5

9

5

116.9

6.4324

24.93

0.02423

0.91781

 

6

8

5

117.2

6.6677

28.05

0.02154

0.93935

 

7

15

3

117.5

7.0534

34.01

0.01776

0.95712

 

8

16

3

117.9

7.3730

39.90

0.01514

0.97226

 

9

6

6

118.4

7.9141

52.30

0.01155

0.98381

 

10

10

5

119.7

9.1877

98.87

0.00611

0.98992

 

11

13

4

121.0

10.5361

194.04

0.00311

0.99303

 

12

5

6

121.3

10.8233

224.00

0.00270

0.99573

 

13

7

6

121.5

11.0414

249.81

0.00242

0.99815

 

14

4

7

123.2

12.6756

565.54

0.00107

0.99922

 

15

2

7

124.4

13.8728

1029.04

0.00059

0.99980

 

16

3

7

126.8

16.3260

3508.74

0.00017

0.99998

 

17

1

8

130.7

20.1927

24253.93

0.00002

1.00000

 

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Gelorini, V., Verbeken, A., Lens, L. et al. Effects of land use on the fungal spore richness in small crater-lake basins of western Uganda. Fungal Diversity 55, 125–142 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-012-0155-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-012-0155-z

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