Macrofungal Diversity in Gashaka Gumti National Park

Abstract

National parks, like Gashaka Gumti-National Park were established to protect, preserve, conserve and manage representative samples of indigenous flora and fauna. Diversity studies of macrofungi have grown during the recent years, because they are important components of biodiversity serving as key primary colonizers in ecosystem, deadwood decomposition and with variety of uses as food, pharmaceutical and medicinal qualities. This study reports on the wet season diversity and distribution of macrofungi in Gallery Forest and Savanna woodland vegetation of Gashaka Gumti-National Park in Northern Nigeria based on fruit body characteristics. A total of 37 species of macro fungi distributed across 21 families were encountered. The Gallery Forest recorded the highest number of species (21 species) compared to Savanna woodland (17 species) during the sampling period. The distribution of species across families showed that Mycenaceae had the highest number of species, followed by Agaricaceae, Bolbitiaceae, Xylariaceae and Tricholomataceae while twelve of the other families had only one species each. This revealed that macrofungi utilized wide range of substrates where the soil had 21 (53.85 %) species, followed by log with 18 (48.72 %), leaf litter 5 (10.26 %) and one (5.13 %) species from fruit shell. The availability and the types of substrates are important drivers of macrofungal composition with majority (78.38 %) of macrofungal species occurring on a single type of substrate (substrate-specific). The list of macrofungi in this study provides the baseline information on the assessment of changes in macrofungal diversity in the National Park.