Boletus erythropus (Photo: François Ayer/WSL)

Laccaria laccata (Photo: Simon Egli/WSL)

Boletus edulis (Photo: Simon Egli/WSL)

Cortinarius varius (Photo: Simon Egli/WSL)

Image Copyright by WSL

For the fist time researchers analyzed the growth of mushrooms over a period of almost 40 years. The study was published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS and shows that the fruiting season has become longer in many European countries.

Quote from the original media release:

"Fungi have important roles in the natural environment, as decomposers of dead material and as facilitators of nutrient uptake by plants. Fungi are everywhere in terrestrial ecosystems but they normally grow hidden belowground or within dead organic resources on which they are feeding. However, many fungi produce large, visible fruit bodies for spore dispersal, predominantly during the autumn in Europe. The timing of fruiting is related to several environmental cues, including climatic factors such as precipitation and temperature.
In a European research project, changes in the fruiting times of fungi during the last 40 years have been explored in relation to climate change. This was done by analysing more than 700,000 digitized herbarium and field records of fungi from Austria, Norway, Switzerland and the UK. In all countries the fruiting season has widened with an earlier start and a later end during the period 1970-2007. The seasonal average fruiting time is now later in all countries. The changes are especially dramatic in the UK, where the fruiting season has expanded far more compared with other countries. Changes in fruiting time mirror changes in the metabolic activities of fungi, with potential large effects on, for example, the carbon budgets of ecosystems. The finding were recently reported in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)".

Study confirms data of the WSL fungi reserve

WSL has gathered fungi data during 32 years in research plot in Western Switzerland, the "Pilzreservat La Chanéaz". The new study confirms the core findings of that long term project and complements newer observations made on truffels in Southern Germany (see links below).

(See the German or French version of this page for the WSL media release.)

Three scientists of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL participated in the study: Ulf Büntgen, Simon Egli and Beatrice Senn-Irlet.

Contact

• Beatrice Senn
  

• Simon Egli
  

• Ulf Büntgen
  

Publication

Kauserud H, Heegaard E, Büntgen U, Halvorsen R, Egli S, Senn-Irlet B, Greilhuber I, Dämon W, Sparks T, Nordén J, Høiland K, Kirk P, Semenov M, Boddy L, Stenseth NC (2012) Warming-induced shift in European mushroom fruiting phenology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA

Related papers

• Büntgen U, Kauserud H, Egli S (2012) Linking mushroom productivity and phenology to climate variability (PDF) -  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10: 14-19
• Stobbe U, Büntgen U, Sproll L, Tegel W, Egli S, Fink S (2012) Spatial distribution and ecological variation of re-discovered German truffle habitats (PDF). Fungal Ecology 5: 591-599