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Mushroom Behavior Points to Global Warming Effects

By grrlscientist on April 7, 2007.

Warmer conditions towards the end of the year allow the Fly Agaric to fruit as late as December.

Image source: BBC News.

A unique research project has revealed that rising temperatures are affecting fungi in southern England by allowing mushrooms to grow during the winter when they never did before, and to fruit earlier and later in the season, as well as more often.

This research, published in the top-tier journal, Science, is one of the first studies to show a biological impact of global warming in autumn as well as in spring.

Fungus enthusiast Edward Gange collected 52,000 sightings of mushrooms and toadstools during his walks around Salisbury during a 50-year time period. Analysis by his son Alan, a professor of ecology at Royal Holloway, University of London, revealed several remarkable events.

"My father was a stonemason, and his hobby was mycology," said Professor Gange. "For 50 years of his life, he went out and recorded the appearance of mushrooms and toadstools around Salisbury, and he also got his friends in the local natural history group to bring back samples they found when they were out walking."

Gange's father collected sightings that included 315 species of mushrooms and toadstools that typically appear in the autumn. These above-ground parts of the fungi are the seasonal reproductive parts, called fruiting bodies, of mushrooms that typically live in soil, on rotting wood or in tree roots.

"When he retired, he bought himself a computer, taught himself (the database program) Excel, and typed in all these 52,000 records," said Professor Gange of his father.

Using these data, Professor Gange found several remarkable changes. One change was that the autumnal fruiting season for these fungi has expanded: some mushrooms and toadstools are emerging earlier each year, while others emerge later -- changes that could be responses to warmer temperatures and higher rainfall. Even more important, he found that more than one third of the species recorded are now fruiting twice per year. There was no record of this before 1976; but since that time, 120 species have shown additional fruiting in springtime.

"I looked up the data on the average temperature for February in southern England during the 1950s, and it was 3.5C," said Professor Gange. "In the current decade it's 5.2C. We used to get cold days and nights in February which caused fungi to be dormant; these days we get very little of that."

A number of studies have shown climate-related changes in species' behavior in springtime, but this is one of the first studies that reveals a parallel trend in autumn.

This study is remarkable for other reasons as well. It is one of the few research papers published in Science, one of the two preeminent science journals in the world, that was carried out by a father-and-son research team, as well as a team that consists of one member not formally trained in the sciences.

"I'm on top of the world, I can't quite believe it yet," said Gange.

Citerd story.

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Hmm. That could represent more food for animals, but I wonder what the increased fungal growth is doing to the soil?

By David Harmon (not verified) on 07 Apr 2007 #permalink

Speaking AGW, the (not-yet-copy-edited, sigh :-P) the summary for policymakers of the AR4 Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability WG2 report from the IPCC is out.
Note particularly fig SPM-1 on page 5 ... despite all the worry about 3rd world countries in the south, the temperate NH has by far the most observed changes to date.
(However North Africa and Central Asia also show big changes, and they are if anything more vulnerable.)

The big surprise (pg 8):

Food, fibre and forest products
Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature
increases of up to 1-3 C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions. * D [5.4]

Which is good news, though I'm skeptical. For starters I would like to know what assumptions about agricultural adaptations they made for the 'local mean' temperature increases of up to 1-3 C.
Also ... I must point out that in N America, some mid to high latitude areas are already seeing local mean temperature anomalies ranging up to 4 C (annual anomalies, w.r.t to 1990-2000 base period.).

Here's the corresponding agricultural bad news (and thus the worry about the south ...):

At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease
for even small local temperature increases (1-2 C), which would increase risk of hunger. * D [5.4]
Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average
temperature over a range of 1-3 C, but above this it is projected to decrease. * D [5.4, 5.ES]
Adaptations such as altered cultivars and planting times allow low and mid- to high latitude cereal yields to
be maintained at or above baseline yields for modest warming. * N [5.5]

It also looks like other animals continue to be more threatened than humans:

Ecosystems
The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of
climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and
other global change drivers (e.g., land use change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources). ** N [4.1 to
4.6]
Over the course of this century net carbon uptake by terrestrial ecosystems is likely to peak before mid-
century and then weaken or even reverse11, thus amplifying climate change. ** [4.ES]
Approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of
extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5oC. * N [4.4, T4.1]

Wooo! Cool data! It's amazing what sort of data sets are out there, that have been collected by amateurs. Even if it isn't perfect, one can still get a lot of information out of it, as this shows.

Long term data sets are really important for evolutionary and ecological studies, because they are studying dynamic processes, so observations of the dynamics are needed. Oh, and they're also a lot of fun for us statisticians to play around with.

Bob

wooo! are those magic mushrooms? :)))