SEE PEER REVIEW

INTRO:

Authors are going to test whether different morphological traits affect colonization-extinction rates of wood-decaying fungi. They are aiming to get information on ecology of  different fungi and their sensitivities to forest management in order to improve conservation measures.

MERITS:

It would be a good thing to get more information on fungi for protection purposes.

CRITIQUE:

I was wondering if the selected species have similar detection probabilities? Or is it possible that some species remain undetected more often than others? Can e.g. the size and life-span correlate with the detection probabity? If this could happen, how authors are planning to take this into account?

DISCUSSION:

Colonization rate could depend on the precense of the species outside the surveyed stand - is it possible to somehow consider this?

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INTRO:

This proposal abstract links fungi functional traits to species colonisation and establishment. In making this link, the authors will elucidate the mechanisms affecting the meta-population dynamics of species and regional persistence, thereby improving forest management.

MERITS:

The proposal addresses an interesting and important topic in conservation biology. The authors appear to have collected colonisation and extinction rates for an impressive number of fungi species, and I expect that their results might provide general inferences for similar systems; e.g., other ephemeral patch communities, which are especially abundant and often unusually diverse.

CRITIQUE:

If possible, I think the abstract would be strengthened by making the "competing hypotheses about functional trait effects" a bit more explicit, rather than leaving them up to the reader to infer; i.e., can the authors be more specific about the hypotheses being addressed?

DISCUSSION:

This is a very interesting proposal, and I believe that it could have widespread implications both for conservation of fungi in Fennoscandia and an understanding the spatial dynamics of similar systems more generally. Emphemeral patch commnunities such as those of wood-decaying fungi are ubiquitous and often unusually species rich, making these results of general importance.

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INTRO:

This study presents the results of a large scale survey of fungi on forest soils based on metabarcoding, and compare these data with Citizen Science data from the Swedish Species Gateway. Monitoring based on metabarcoding of soil samples has a large potential in detecting population trends in mycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi, both offering important ecosystem services.

MERITS:

This study involves a highly interesting and exceptionally large dataset. It will be very valuable to learn the extent to which the method can give information that is general of the communities in different types of forests, soil types and management types, and reveal trends in time.

CRITIQUE:

A comparison of systematically collected metabarcoding data and Citizen Science data on the sporocarps seems to be in the focus. This kind of comparison of two very different types of data is not straightforward. The issues and challenges are not mentioned in the abstract, but will likely be discussed in the actual presentation.

DISCUSSION:

Colonization and extinction are complex quantities pushed forward by metapopulation theory. I really agree with the authors that isolating the underpinning biological mechanisms at play is an urging question for conservation, especially when it comes to prediction of species' future in a changing, fragemnted environment. Depending on the part of the life cycle and the traits involved into colonization and extinction macro-processes, they may change in a different fashion as climate and landscape change through time. Overall, I am really positive about this study.