Othón Alcántara-Ayala

Current knowledge of fungi from Neotropical montane cloud forests: distributional patterns and composition

Montane cloud forests in the Neotropics harbor a great wealth of biological diversity and a large number of endemic species. Here, we present (i) a comprehensive data mining exercise of fungi from Neotropical montane cloud forests (NMCF), (ii) an extensive review of the current knowledge of fungal richness, distribution and composition, and (iii) a preliminary analysis of fungal endemicity in Mexican montane cloud forests. Based on a survey of literature and other sources, we assembled a database of 6349 records representing 2962 fungal species in NMCF. The computed individual-based species rarefaction curve remained non-asymptotic, and the extrapolation curve estimated an expected increment of 42% in the number of species by doubling the sampling effort. Fungal species richness was highest in NMCF from Mesoamerica, particularly from Mexico and Costa Rica. Fungi from Mesoamerica, Caribbean and South America are significantly different at diverse taxonomic levels, and there is a little overlap in the fungal species recorded from these regions. The analyses of endemicity of the Mexican dataset performed with parsimony and Bayesian methods were highly complementary. They showed the following areas of endemicity supported by the congruent distribution of fungal species: (i) two main regions in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB); (ii) a region in the southern part of Veracruz; and (iii) a region located in the eastern part of TMVB with affinities with Sierra Madre Oriental and the Chiapan-Guatemala Highlands. This last area was supported by five species of Glomeromycota and is consistent with an area of endemicity previously found in vascular plants. In this study, we provide a perspective on gaps in knowledge regarding the diversity and distribution of fungi in NMCF, and provide a full dataset of fungal records with geographical, bibliographic and taxonomic information.