Good Shelter, Bad Food: Invertebrates Inhabiting Fruiting Bodies of Spring Ascomycetes in a Mixed Forest

Abstract

Abstract: Fruiting bodies of ascomycete fungi that appear in temperate forests after the melting of snow cover but before the active plant vegetation, were probed as an ephemeral food resource for soil and terrestrial invertebrates for the first time. Studied apothecia of Sarcoscypha austriaca were inhabited only by Nematoda, while the diversity of invertebrates inhabiting the hollow ascocarps of Gyromitra esculenta was considerably higher (at least 31 families). Stable isotope analysis confirmed the trophic status of G. esculenta as a humus saprotroph and showed very limited trophic links of invertebrates to ascocarps, which suggests a more pronounced function of the mature fruiting bodies of G. esculenta as a hideout, rather than a food substrate.