The forgotten ecosystem engineers: community and functional ecology of pioneer wood decay fungi in the canopy of beech trees

Abstract

The contributions of colleagues and students to the work presented in this thesis are explicitly detailed below: Chapter 3: Damien Le'Goff and Rebecca Owens assisted with field work, DNA extraction and PCR procedures Chapter 4: Dr. Ed Dudley ran GC-MS analysis Chapter 5: Dr. Suzy Moody collaborated on experimental setup procedures. Eoin O'Connor, Maynooth University, undertook protein extraction, peptide preparation and ran LC-MS/MS and protein sequence identification analyses. Dr. Ed Dudley ran GC-MS analysis.

Metabolic responses of two pioneer wood decay fungi to diurnally cycling temperature

“…diurnal cycles, ligninolytic fungi, metabolomics, proteomics, temperature, wood decay Heilmann-Clausen, 2001) and as such we consider it to have a stress-selected strategy. On the other hand, M. mucida was the most commonly isolated species, associated with less desiccated beech branches in the same study (South Wales, UK; Rawlings, 2018) and we therefore consider it to be more of a generalist. We anticipated that variable temperature would elicit a different biochemical response compared with stable temperature and that this difference may be less marked in E. glandulosa due to its stress-selected nature.…”

“…Here, we report on a simple wood-block experiment to examine proteomic and metabolomic responses of two basidiomycete fungi, Mucidula mucida and Exidia glandulosa, to both stable and diurnally cycling temperature. Both organisms are common constituents of naturally occurring pioneer communities in beech Fagus sylvatica tree branches in South Wales, UK (Rawlings, 2018). E. glandulosa is tolerant of desiccation and often found in sun-baked or other highly desiccated wood (Boddy, 2001;Boddy & Rayner, 1983;…”