Macrofungi from Chile - By Götz Palfner

The wide gradient of climatic and geographic conditions in Chile ranging in north-south direction from such extremes as the arid Atacama desert to the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego and from west to east from the Pacific coast to the summits of the Cordillera de los Andes, has created an extraordinary variety of ecosystems and, consequently, fungal habitats. Chile´s flora is of gondwanean origin and shares many higher taxa with its today remote counterparts in Australia and New Zealand; on the other hand there is a high grade of endemism on the species level, due to the long isolation by the above mentioned climatical and topographical barriers.
Macromycetes are particularly rich in species in the mediterranean, temperate and subantarctic forests between Central and Southern Chile, approximately 35° and 55° s.l. where they are associated with the diverse plant community as parasites, saprobionts or symbionts, most of the latter forming ectomycorrhiza with Nothofagus (Southern Beech).
Main plant components of Chilean forests apart from Nothofagus are sclerophyllous tree species of the Myrtales and Laurales kin; there are only a few native conifers, represented by around half a dozen species of Araucariaceae, Podocarpaceae and Cupressaceae which are mostly found in the colline and subalpine zones. Temperature and precipitation in these forests vary considerably along a latitudinal gradient, from mediterranean climate with mild winters and dry summers in Central Chile where broadleaved, deciduous species of Nothofagus dominate, to the temperate, humid conditions of the Valdivian rainforest with its rich diversity of deciduous and evergreen tree species and annual rainfall of more than 5000 mm, terminating with the storm-ridden and cold subantarctic zone in the extreme South, dominated by krummholz forests of Nothofagus pumilio; a similar but vertical gradient can be observed with rising altitude between the coastal lowlands and the central depression on one hand and the coastal cordillera and the Andes, respectively, on the other.