Chilean Macrofungi

Considering the rather well studied fauna and flora of Chile and the importance of forestry for the national economy, it is surprising that knowledge about autochthonous fungi is still very limited; for obvious reasons, those species with conspicuous fruiting bodies, which are referred to as macrofungi, have been the main objects of attention of the few mycologists who have performed larger surveys in the past. The beginnings of mycology in Chile date back to the late 19th and early 20th century when botanists like Philippi, Reiche, Espinosa, Thaxter and particularly Spegazzini performed the first scientific collections in the region; several decades later, pioneers like Gamundi, Horak, Moser and Singer described and revised the vast majority of larger fungi we know now from Chile and Argentina; their publications formed the base for later studies like those performed by Garrido, Lazo and Valenzuela. Whereas the Agaricales s. l. can be considered rather well known, at least regionally, less conspicuous and hardly studied groups like Thelephorales, most corticioid Aphyllophorales and hypogeous taxa (to name only a few) still remain very much a black box.

Most genera of larger Asco- and Basidiomycetes present in Chile are also known from other mycoregions, a few like Stephanopus, Descolea or Cyttaria seem to be endemic or limited to former parts of Gondwana including Australia and New Zealand. Whereas mycorrhizal symbionts show a higher level of endemism and cosmopolitan species like Hebeloma crustuliniforme, Laccaria laccata and Paxillus involutus probably have been introduced with forest plantations, the saprophytes include a considerable number of taxa with almost worldwide distribution like Stereum spp., Trametes spp. and Coprinus spp. which seem to be naturally present.

Few data exist about the distribution of Chilean fungi, on one hand due to the patchiness of fungal surveys performed in the past, on the other hand because especially in the northernmost Nothofagus area only small remnants of native forest are left, most of them are private properties and not easy to access; however, some general idiosyncratic phenomena can be observed, e.g. the abundance of Cortinarius and related taxa within the mycorrhizal Basidiomycetes, contrasted by very few Boletales and Russulales (native Lactarius species are absent), and the trend in several groups towards formation of secotioid and hypogeous fruiting bodies, probably as an answer to water stress in volcanic soils periodically prone to draught.