Can road verges act as alternative habitats for meadow macrofungi?

Abstract

The area of meadows and other traditional rural biotopes has drastically decreased in Europe. Although meadows harbor high biodiversity, functionally important groups, such as fungi, have been rarely studied. Road verges have been suggested to function as alternative habitats for some meadow species. We studied fungal species composition and richness in grazed meadows, mown meadows and road verges in Central Finland. We recorded 15,329 basidiomes representing 253 macrofungal species; 19 species are red-listed in Finland. The average species richness of all macrofungal species did not differ among the habitat types, but at landscape level the species richness was highest on grazed meadows and lowest on road verges. Considering macrofungi that prefer culturally affected habitats, grazed meadows had significantly more, and road verges nearly so, species than mown meadows, on average. The community structure of these fungi was related to soil pH and soil grain size, and those on road verges differed from mown and grazed meadows. 40% of the macrofungal species were associated with meadows (grazed, mown or both), while 23% were associated with road verges. Our study shows that particularly grazed meadows, but also road verges, harbor species rich macrofungal assemblages, including many red-listed species. Because species composition differed between road verges and the two meadow types, road verges are not fully alternative to traditional rural biotopes.