Henkel et al. (2012) examined plots in Guyana over seven see more years for ectomycorrhizal macrofungi. One of the most interesting results from their study is that the species accumulation curve appears to have flattened, but when compared with the study of Smith et al. (2011)
who examined ectomycorrhizas on the roots of three legume trees, only 40 % of the fungi found as ectomycorrhizas had been discovered as sporocarps during the seven-year sampling period. This indicates that many species remain to be found that have not yet been sampled as sporocarps and reinforces the ephemeral nature of their formation. Likewise, determining the factors that affect species diversity and community composition across scales is still an open question. López-Quintero et al. (2012) examine the changes in fungal composition between forest types. First, they examine forests at various stages of recovery following agricultural clearance and secondly they determine the compositional change
between two sites in the Colombian Amazon. In their study, fungal diversity did not necessarily FK228 supplier increase with secondary forest age (as is commonly shown for trees, e.g. Letcher and Chazdon 2009) and, in addition, they showed a high turnover in species composition between their two study sites. Gómez-Hernández et al. (2012) present data showing that fungi from an elevational transect in Mexico Adenosine exhibit a mid-elevation peak in species richness as found in many other plant and animal taxa (Rahbek 1995), but that the patterns are somewhat different for xylophagous and ectomycorrhizal fungi. Many fungi are cryptic sporocarp producers, and, when they are found, are difficult to identify morphologically. For this and other reasons, molecular tools have been particularly valuable in fungal ecology/diversity studies that strive to document or analyze fungal communities. However, when using molecular identifications it is important to be able to consistently delineate
molecular operational taxonomic units (analogous to species) across different studies and/or different loci. The study of Setaro et al. (2012) is important in that it sets out to optimize distance thresholds for the two most commonly used loci (ITS and LSU) to maximize comparability of sequence data generated by different studies. Then data generated from Sebacinales species sampled as mycorrhizas in tropical (Ecuador) and temperate regions are compared to determine that these fungi may be similarly diverse in both regions. Phosri et al.’s molecular study (Phosri et al. 2012) on ectomycorrhizal fungi in a tropical dry forest in Thailand showed a moderate to low diversity of fungi on tree roots and a fungal community with similarities to both temperate and tropical biomes.