Global and national biodiversity initiatives, socio-economic potential, and scalability of reintroduction of fungi into dead wood

Abstract

Data sharing, data archival and data citation are new, but increasingly important elements of the scholarly activities. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) aggregates data, shared by a global network of publishing organisations: natural history museums, citizen science organisations, and, importantly, national biodiversity data systems, such as FinBIF. Data on the rare species are often stored in the restricted access databases for red-listing. Availability of background distribution data is essential for biodiversity monitoring and assigning species with threat categories.

What happens after species go regionally extinct? Approaches to reverse regional extinctions include habitat restoration and species translocation. In a study carried out in S Finland, we prove that species translocation is a working approach for wood-inhabiting fungi – a group rarely, if at all, used in restoration, but functionally important for forest ecosystems. Saproxylic fungi decline as a consequence of forest fragmentation and loss, and of habitation degradation. In our study, all selected red-listed species of fungi established in the inoculated logs as mycelia, and three species produced fruiting bodies. Early decay logs supported greater success rate among the inoculated strains. Following the experiment, we observed fungivorous insects grazing on and colonizing the fruiting bodies of the reintroduced species, thus proving the inclusion of the translocates into the forest food webs.

We are lacking the most important structural element for biodiversity in boreal forest, the dead wood. In Nordic countries and many other regions, decaying wood is a biodiversity treasure habitat, both in numbers of inhabiting species, and in complexity of the interaction webs. Dead wood is a microhabitat with slow successions, and unassisted colonization of newly created dead wood may be too slow to counterbalance the deterioration at the landscape level. As the source populations of fungi remain intact and inoculums can be produced at low cost, we argue that habitat restoration can translate into biodiversity restoration faster and with higher cost-efficiency, if combined with species translocation. In dead wood successions priority effect of old-growth pioneer decomposers support guilds of old-growth forest successors. Early decayers from the nearby populations in the species-rich old-growth forests would be the best choice of source strains. Reintroduction of the basal species in the food webs has a potential of positive effect for the associated species.

Our method enables faster recovery of forest biodiversity, which translates into socio-economic benefits. Availability of biodiversity data systems are needed to support strategical planning of habitat restoration and species translocation to increase cost-effectiveness. An integrated approach would combine source strains from nearby populations, data on habitat quality and connectivity, and our inoculation technique.