Some agaric distribution patterns involving Pacific landmasses and Pacific Rim

Abstract

The Pacifi c Ocean and the "Pacifi c Rim" include a vast geographic area and most categories of the earth's ecological niches. As could be expected, macrofungi conform to many distribution patterns, some of which are discussed in this article. An introduction to species concepts and some other ancillary methodological considerations is followed by examples of some distributional patterns: Gondwanan, Transberingian, and island biogeographic. Some considerations of changing distributional patterns are also discussed: widening distributions, probable human mediation, and some unique cases that seem not to conform to accepted patterns. Not surprisingly, we conclude that concerted future collecting and comparison of specimens using multiple methodologies offer the only hope for understanding mushroom distributions, regardless of the geographic area of interest.