Combined effects of retention forestry and prescribed burning on polypore fungi

1. Retention forestry and prescribed burning aim to alleviate the negative effects of forestry on biodiversity by maintaining the structural elements of natural forests in managed forests. We present the long-term effects of these methods on polypore fungi, a taxonomic group that has been severely affected by forestry. 2. Using a 10-year, large-scale field experiment, we studied how prescribed burning and two different tree retention levels (10 and 50 m3 ha−1) affect polypore fungi. We monitored polypore sporocarps on 2767 individually marked trees four times over the study period: in the first autumn after the treatments, and again 2, 4 and 10 years after the treatments. 3. The number of polypore species and records initially increased rather slowly but showed a marked increasing trend towards the end of the 10-year monitoring period. After 2 years, the higher retention sites had an average 8·5 species and the low retention sites 4·5 species per site. After 4 years, the difference was ...