Predicted the effects of climate change on future distributions of ectomycorrhizal fungi

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi form the dominant mycorrhizal type in European
forests and vary in their specificity to tree hosts.  Studying
the distributions of ECM fungi can help understand and manage their
response to environmental change.  However, fungal geographical
distributions at continental scales are poorly understood and whether they
vary with host specificity is rarely known.  In this study, we
investigated the influence of climate change and host specificity on the
geographical distributions of 66 ECM fungi across Europe. We modelled the
ECM fungal distributions using ensemble models based on four algorithms.
Our models predicted that the distributions of most ECM fungal species
will decrease and shift north under climate change predictions from three
different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP126, SSP370 and SSP585)
projected for 2041-2070 and 2071-2100, and a large number of ECM fungal
conifer specialists will lose their current habitats compared to broadleaf
specialists and generalists.  These results reflect that
distribution modelling for ECM fungi should consider both host trees and
global change to guide conservation.