Ten principles for conservation translocations of threatened wood-inhabiting fungi

Abstract Unlike for many other organism groups, conservation translocations of fungi are still rare. Encouraged by recent successful translocations, there is a growing interest in applying this conservation tool to threatened wood-inhabiting fungi. When combined with other conservation or restoration measures, translocation can be an effective measure for preventing further population decline in the short term, and species extinctions in the long term. Translocations can be appropriate for rare and specialist fungal species that occur as small local populations in isolated patches across fragmented landscapes, where there is a low likelihood of successful dispersal between distant host tree…

Nitrogen fixation and methanotrophy in forest mosses along a N deposition gradient

Abstract Nitrogen deposition has decreased the plant-associated nitrogen (N 2 ) fixation when measured using the indirect acetylene reduction assay (ARA). However, nitrogen deposition can also lead to changes in the diversity of moss symbionts, e.g. affect methanotrophic N 2 fixation, which is not measured by ARA. To test this hypothesis we compared ARA with the direct stable isotope method ( 15 N 2 incorporation) and studied methanotrophy in two mosses, Hylocomium splendens and Pleurozium schreberi , collected from seven forest sites along a boreal latitudinal N deposition transect. We recognized that the two independent N 2 fixation measures gave corresponding results with the conversion …

Metsien käytön kestävyysmuutoksen mittaamisen periaatteista

Suomalaisen metsäpolitiikan keskeinen päämäärä on jo yli sadan vuoden ajan ollut puuntuotannollinen kestävyys, mutta metsätalouden kestävyyden tarkastelu on laajentunut yhteiskunnallisten tarpeiden ja arvostusten muuttumisen myötä. Nykyisin metsäpolitiikan tavoitteeksi mainitaan usein kokonaiskestävyys, joka on kuitenkin kestävyyden osa-alueiden välisten subjektiivisten, kullekin arvioijalle yksilöllisten vaihtosuhteiden takia mahdotonta saavuttaa. Tässä tutkimuksessa määrittelimme tutkijatyönä laatuvaatimukset kestävyyskeskustelussa käytettäville kriteereille. Tarvitaan kattava ja operatiivinen kriteeristö, jolla kestävyysmuutoksia voidaan objektiivisesti seurata. Kattavuus tarkoittaa, ett…

Metsien kestävyysmuutosten tunnistamiseen tarvitaan yhteiset mittarit

Methanotrophs are core members of the diazotroph community in decaying Norway spruce logs

Dead wood is initially a nitrogen (N) poor substrate, where the N content increases with decay, partly due to biological N2 fixation, but the drivers of the N accumulation are poorly known. We quantified the rate of N2 fixation in decaying Norway spruce logs of different decay stages and studied the potential regulators of the N2-fixation activity. The average rate for acetylene reduction in the decaying wood was 7.5 nmol ethylene g−1d−1, which corresponds to 52.9 μg N kg−1d−1. The number of nifH copies (g−1 dry matter) was higher at the later decay stages, but no correlation between the copy number and the in vitro N2 fixation rate was found. All recovered nifH sequences were assigned to t…