Data from: Give me a sample of air and I will tell which species are found from your region – molecular identification of fungi from airborne spore samples

Fungi are a megadiverse group of organisms, they play major roles in ecosystem functioning, and are important for human health, food production, and nature conservation. Our knowledge on fungal diversity and fungal ecology is however still very limited, in part because surveying and identifying fungi is time demanding and requires expert knowledge. We present a method that allows anyone to generate a list of fungal species likely to occur in a region of interest, with minimal effort and without requiring taxonomical expertise. The method consists of using a cyclone sampler to acquire fungal spores directly from the air to an Eppendorf tube, and applying DNA barcoding with probabilistic species identification to generate a list of species from the sample. We tested the feasibility of the method by acquiring replicate air samples from different geographical regions within Finland. Our results show that air sampling is adequate for regional-level surveys, with samples collected >100 km apart varying but samples collected <10 km apart not varying in their species composition. The data show marked phenology, and thus that obtaining a representative species list requires aerial sampling that covers the entire fruiting season. In sum, aerial sampling combined with probabilistic molecular species identification offers a highly effective method for generating a species list of airborne dispersed fungi. The method presented here has the potential to revolutionize fungal surveys, as it provides a highly cost-efficient way to include fungi as a part of large-scale biodiversity assessments and monitoring programs.

真菌是一类物种极为丰富的生物类群，在生态系统功能中发挥核心作用，同时对人类健康、食品生产与自然保护均具有重要意义。然而，目前人类对真菌多样性及真菌生态学的认知仍十分有限，部分原因在于真菌调查与鉴定工作耗时耗力，且需要专业分类学知识。本研究提出一种方法，可使任何人无需分类学专业知识，仅需投入极少精力即可生成目标区域内可能存在的真菌物种列表。该方法依托旋风式采样器（cyclone sampler）直接从空气中采集真菌孢子至Eppendorf管（Eppendorf tube），并结合DNA条形码（DNA barcoding）与概率性物种鉴定技术，从样本中生成物种列表。我们通过在芬兰境内不同地理区域采集重复空气样本，验证了该方法的可行性。研究结果表明，空气采样适用于区域级生物多样性调查：采样间距超过100公里的样本，其物种组成存在显著差异；而采样间距小于10公里的样本，物种组成并无明显差异。数据显示真菌群落存在显著的物候特征，因此若要获取具有代表性的物种列表，空中采样需覆盖整个子实体发生季。综上，结合概率性分子物种鉴定的空气采样技术，可为生成空气传播真菌的物种列表提供一种高效方法。本研究提出的方法有望彻底革新真菌调查工作，因其可提供极高的成本效益，使真菌能够被纳入大规模生物多样性评估与监测项目之中。