Assessing macrofungal diversity to identify conservation priority areas: a case study from the southern section of...

Biodiversity has provided enormous sustainable advantages for human beings, but is facing extinction threats under the pressure of global environmental changes. Nevertheless, although macrofungi play a crucial role in forest and grass ecosystems, there is no standard procedure for evaluating macrofungal diversity in priority areas for ecological protection, which could support scientific and feasible conservation strategies. Here, we selected the southern section of the Hengduan Mountains as a sampling region and conducted systematic field surveys on macrofungi. From 177 sampling sites, 1771 macrofungal specimens were collected. Through integrated morphological and sequencing (ITS and nLSU regions) analyses, 809 species were accurately identified, belonging to two phyla, nine classes, 28 orders, 123 families, and 336 genera. We found that the high, mid and low elevation groups in the sampling region had no significant difference in macrofungal species richness and phylogenetic diversity, and shared a random process of community assembly mainly shaped by ecological habitats. However, the three elevation groups had lots of unique species, significantly different community structures, and unique indicator species. More importantly, the currently established protected areas may not truly protect the full extent of the macrofungal diversity in this region. Accordingly, we encourage the establishment of more nature reserves specifically dedicated to unique macrofungal species identified in non-protected areas, along with the development of long-term monitoring programs focusing on indicator species to track the spatiotemporal dynamics of macrofungal communities. Beyond the southern section of the Hengduan Mountains, this study proposes an approach for conducting macrofungal diversity assessments that could potentially be used to identify areas for conservation, and which we hope will be taken up by the scientific community and adapted to other regions and types of ecosystems in future work.