Search results for "spore size"

Growth sites of polypores from quantitative expert evaluation: Late-stage decayers and saprotrophs fruit closer to ground

2017

Abstract Life history traits are key to why species occur when and where they do and how their populations will respond to environmental changes. However, dispersal-related traits of fungi are generally poorly known. We studied how spore release height from the ground, an important determinant of airborne dispersal, is connected to other traits in polypores. We collected expert evaluations of fruit body growth sites for 140 species and found that experts generally provided consistent estimates of height above the ground. Height was correlated with other traits: species fruiting on living trees, earlier decay stages and deciduous hosts tend to fruit higher above the ground. While our data do…