A mycogeographical study of Norwegian macrofungi based on GLM analyses of herbarium data

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the mycogeography of 83 selected macrofungi in Norway. The fungi’s distribution patterns were related to a dataset of 81 environmental variables through GLM in order to reveal which factors that accounts for the species distributions. The GLM models for the 83 species were generally dominated by variables in the categories ‘Temperature’, ‘Energy’, ‘Humidity’ and ‘Topography’, plus the variable Geology richness, confirming established knowledge about which environmental variables that govern the distribution of fungi. Some species distribution patterns could be rather precisely modelled by the environmental variables through the GLM analyses - in some species up to 60% of the variation was accounted for in models. Highest proportions of the variation were explained in species with restricted distributions. A PCA analysis of the F-values from the GLM analyses supported that temperature conditions were the most important structuring factors. These results suggest that global warming could have large impacts on the Norwegian funga. Furthermore, the analyses indicated that species within predefined mycogeographic elements to some extent are governed by the same environmental variables, but there were also great overlaps between various elements. This study represents a first exploration of how digitized fungal herbarium data can be analyzed alongside with other types of data using powerful statistical methods, but exemplifies though, that digitized herbarium data represent a valuable resource for research within the fields of ecology, conservation biology and biogeography.