View article

Before initiating a survey or a monitoring program of any group of organisms in an area, an investigator should carry out some preliminary background research. Essential materials for the research include maps of the area and descriptions of its climate, geology, and vegetation. Learning to recognize the woody plant species and major plant associations likely to be encountered is particularly important. Knowledge of the anticipated species diversity and distributions of the macrofungi is also very helpful. Such background information increases an investigator’s understanding of the habitat requirements of the fungi encountered, aids in delimiting plots that accurately represent the habitats present, and helps in the design of an effective sampling regimen. Color photographs of the vegetation and landscape also are useful. In any study, the investigator must choose where, when, and how to collect data. Field studies are particularly sensitive to timing and location of observations. Macrofungi exhibit patterns of diversity that are related largely to substratum and host availability, and their fruiting (and, hence, our opportunity to observe them) is climate driven. The productive seasons for sampling macrofungi and the frequency and duration of sampling are dictated largely by the local climate. Fungi fruit when temperatures are above freezing and moisture is available. Different species, however, exhibit different fruiting phenologies, which vary from year to year and at different elevations and latitudes. Maximum richness of fruiting species occurs only during brief periods and differs among years. Environmental variables and ecological processes that affect …