Experimental evidence that fungal symbionts of beetles suppress wood decay by competing with decay fungi
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Entomology, Mycology, Forestry
- Keywords
- Priority effects, Ophiostomatales, Pinus taeda, Basidiomycota, Scolytinae, forest health, lignin, Platypodinae, cellulose
- Copyright
- © 2019 Skelton et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Experimental evidence that fungal symbionts of beetles suppress wood decay by competing with decay fungi. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27676v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27676v1
Abstract
Throughout forests worldwide, bark and ambrosia beetles inoculate dead and dying trees with symbiotic fungi. We experimentally determined the effects of three common and widely distributed ascomycete symbionts, and one introduced Asian basidiomycete symbiont on the decay of pine sapwood. Ascomycetes caused less than 5% mass loss and no structural degradation, whereas the basidiomycete Flavodon ambrosius caused nearly 15% mass loss and visible degradation of wood structure. In co-inoculation experiments, the beetle symbionts Ophiostoma ips and Raffaelea fusca reduced white and brown rot decay through competition with Ganoderma curtisii and Phaeolus schweinitzii, respectively. The inhibitory effects of O. ips and R. fusca on decay were negated when co-inoculated with F. ambrosius, suggesting that widespread introduction of this beetle symbiont could alter forest carbon fluxes. In contrast to the predominant forest biology narrative, most bark and ambrosia beetles introduce fungi that delay rather than facilitate tree biomass recycling.
Author Comment
This manuscript provides first experimental evidence that the symbiotic fungi of bark and ambrosia beetles reduce decay rates of pine sapwood by competing with wood decay fungi. This is the first version and will soon be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
Supplemental Information
wood cubes mass loss
This is the raw data from wood cube decay assays.
wood strip mass loss
This is the raw data for the wood strip assays