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Ecological Intelligence / Subject

fungi

Peer-reviewed Latin America & Caribbean

Dead logs hosted the richest slime-mold assemblages in one Araucaria forest

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
São Francisco de Paula National Forest, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
System
Araucaria forest / deadwood microhabitat

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Sampling dead logs, branches, twigs, leaf litter and living plants at three locations yielded 160 slime-mold specimens in 30 taxa. Dead logs had the highest mean richness and abundance, and community composition differed among the five substrates. Two taxa were newly recorded for Rio Grande do Sul.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

A stand's biodiversity cannot be inferred from tree cover alone; decomposition substrates create important, distinct microhabitats worth noticing in habitat inventories.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

The team sampled just 15 units at three points and did not quantify how much of each substrate was available. Higher recorded richness on logs cannot be translated into an experimentally established habitat preference or generalized to all Araucaria forests.

SOURCE

Mycological Progress — Velloso et al. (2026)
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A fine-scale Brazilian substrate survey argues for looking below the canopy when assessing forest biodiversity.

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Peer-reviewed Global

Cyanobacteria and fungi can stabilize quartz tailings—but the pairing matters

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Controlled quartz-tailings experiment
System
Mine tailings / restoration

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

A 90-day experiment tested individual and paired cyanobacterial and fungal inocula on quartz sand tailings. Several combinations promoted colonization, extracellular polymeric substances and particle binding, but performance varied among pairings.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Biocrust engineering may offer a biological stabilization pathway for some mine wastes, but the treatment is a community-design problem rather than a generic inoculation step.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

This was a controlled 90-day experiment on quartz tailings. Field persistence, erosion resistance under weather, contaminant context, vegetation establishment and scalability were not demonstrated.

SOURCE

Microbial Ecology
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EvidencePeer-reviewedGeographyControlled quartz-tailings experimentSystemMine tailings / restoration WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS A 90-day experiment tested individual and paired cyanobacterial and fungal inocula on quartz sand tailings. Several combinations promoted

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Peer-reviewed Global

Aquatic fungi just got a global dataset—and its gaps are as informative as its scale

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Global — 1,452 aquatic sites in 87 countries
System
Freshwater and marine aquatic ecosystems

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

The FunAqua data descriptor combines 1,076 sediment and 1,299 filtered-water samples from 1,452 sites in 87 countries and reports 50,152 fungal OTUs using long-read ITS metabarcoding. European samples make up about 56% of the dataset, with freshwater lakes and rivers much more heavily represented than several coastal and specialized aquatic habitats.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

This is valuable as both a biodiversity resource and a map of where the evidence is thin. Global microbial baselines become more useful when sampling geography, biome coverage, sequencing depth and laboratory differences remain visible rather than disappearing behind the word 'global.'

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Sampling is geographically and environmentally uneven, protocols and preservation histories vary among contributing campaigns, ITS barcoding has taxonomic limitations, and recovered DNA does not by itself distinguish actively growing aquatic fungi from spores or material transported into the sample.

SOURCE

Scientific Data
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FunAqua assembles long-read metabarcoding from 1,452 sites in 87 countries, but Europe supplies more than half the samples and fungal sequencing depth remains uneven.

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