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Biodiversity studies of myxomycetes in Madagascar

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Abstract

The results of the first comprehensive study of myxomycetes from the island of Madagascar, a world biodiversity hotspot, are reported in this paper. The island is of continental origin, the fourth largest in the world, and has been geographically isolated for more than 160 million years, since its separation from Gondwanaland. The isolation, size and topography of Madagascar have triggered the development of a great variety of different habitats and favoured multiple evolutionary pathways, resulting in many animals and plants that exist nowhere else on earth. Fieldwork for the biodiversity survey of the central and southern parts of the island took place in May 2009, to coincide with the end of the rainy season. Tropical moist forest, sclerophyll forest and dry forest were selected for sampling in Ranomafana, Andringitra, Andohahela and L’Isalo National Parks. Some unique vegetation was sampled in the spiny dry forest and succulent scrub with plants from the genera Alluaudia, Euphorbia, Kalanchoe and Pachypodium. The survey produced 124 species from 22 different genera in more than 750 myxomycete collections. In this paper one species, Perichaena madagascariensis, is described as new to science, 21 species are new records for Africa, and 106 are reported for the first time from Madagascar. Some unusual collections included Physarum lakhanpalii that appeared on Ravenala madagascariensis, Fuligo intermedia and Licea nannengae found on Adansonia grandidieri, Perichaena pulcherrima, Physarum dictyosporum, and P. echinosporum on Euphorbia and Licea rufocuprea on bark. The scope, methods and results of this survey are included in this paper, and comments are made on the ecology, distribution and substrate association of the myxomycetes of these areas of Madagascar. Macrographs, micrographs and SEM images of interesting species are included. The results indicate that the island of Madagascar has a unique assemblage of species of myxomycetes, different from neighbouring islands and from similar but distant environments.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, of the United States (grant DEB-03316284 for a project entitled “PBI: Global Biodiversity of Eumycetozoans”) and the Spanish government (grant CGL 2008 00720/BOS and CGL2011-22684). We are grateful to Dr. Patricia Wright (Stony Brook University, New York), the Madagascar Institut pour la Conservation des Ecosystèmes Tropicaux, the National Parks of Madagascar and the University of Antananarivo for their assistance in setting up and then carrying out fieldwork in Madagascar, Yolanda Ruiz for her technical assistance with SEM and Carlos de Mier for his help with the light micrographs.

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  1. Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Plaza de Murillo, 2, 28014, Madrid, Spain

    Diana Wrigley de Basanta & Carlos Lado

  2. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Apartado Postal 183, Tlaxcala 90,000, Tlaxcala, Mexico

    Arturo Estrada-Torres

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 72701, USA

    Steven L. Stephenson

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  1. Diana Wrigley de Basanta
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Correspondence to Diana Wrigley de Basanta.

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Wrigley de Basanta, D., Lado, C., Estrada-Torres, A. et al. Biodiversity studies of myxomycetes in Madagascar. Fungal Diversity 59, 55–83 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-012-0183-8

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