Biology subjects

Boddy, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Boddy, L..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Local and biogeographical determinants of the diversity and structure of invertebrate communities in rot holes of ash, Fraxinus excelsior

O_LIVeteran trees are biodiversity hotspots, providing a range of microhabitats, including tree hollows or rot holes in trunks, which support a large diversity of invertebrates including threatened species. Each rot hole is a unique microcosm, with variable biotic and abiotic characteristics enabling their use by many invertebrate taxa. C_LIO_LIMost previous studies describing the invertebrate communities of rot holes and the factors determining their structure focus on a narrow range of invertebrate taxa, and many host tree species remain unexplored. European ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) is one of Europes most threatened deciduous tree species due to the spread of ash dieback disease, but the potential impact of these losses on the invertebrate communities that inhabit ash is poorly understood. C_LIO_LIInvertebrates were sampled and identified to family level from 14 sites across Wales and western England, and major physical characteristics of each rot hole and sample site were assessed (e.g., habitat type, altitude, maximum site temperature). C_LIO_LIAsh rot hole invertebrate communities were highly diverse with a range of threatened taxa, including some undescribed or new to the region. There was large variation in both measured rot hole characteristics and the invertebrate communities between individual rot holes, sites and habitats. Both tree-specific and biogeographical factors significantly influenced invertebrate diversity and community structure, suggesting that sustaining the heterogeneity of ash rot holes across a range of locations is required to support saproxylic invertebrate diversity. C_LIO_LIWith increasing ash veteran tree vulnerability, sustaining these vital habitats and their associated invertebrate communities is a conservation imperative. This study has demonstrated that considering heterogeneity in both habitat characteristics and landscape context will be crucial when conserving these communities. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Testing the extreme plastic mycelium hypothesis: Does grazing induce developmental plasticity in saprotrophic fungi?

Phenotypic plasticity is widespread among living organisms, but exceptionally high levels of plasticity are rarely observed in nature. While plasticity can enhance fitness in fluctuating environments, it comes with substantial costs that limit both its expression and evolution. Most of what we know about these limits comes from studies on animals and plants, which typically have fixed body plans. In contrast, modular organisms such as filamentous fungi possess an undetermined, decentralized morphology that allows individuals to adjust their phenotype in response to local environmental conditions. This flexibility has led to speculation that fungi exhibit "extreme phenotypic plasticity," making them an ideal system for studying plasticity mechanisms--yet empirical tests of this assumption remain scarce. To address this gap, we analyzed grazer-induced morphological plasticity in four cord-forming fungal species exposed to soil microfauna with differing feeding behaviors, using a phenotypic trajectory analysis framework and tested alternative hypotheses: One hypothesis is that the flexibility of fungal network development would allow species to converge on a common "grazing-resistant-phenotype". Alternatively, the developmental plasticity for each species might be heavily constrained within species-specific limits. Our results showed that fungal species accounted for most of the total morphological variation, while grazer induced morphologies remained relatively aligned to non-grazed morphological trajectories. Instead of convergence, we found that grazed-phenotypes were more dissimilar across species, reflecting distinct developmental trajectories within species-specific limits. The extent of plasticity varied widely with a maximum of 30% of the morphological variation attributable to grazing pressure. Nevertheless, these findings suggest that morphological plasticity plays a relatively minor role in response to grazing for most species. The dominant species signature and constrained plasticity supports the use of morphological attributes of mycelia as functional traits in ecological studies. Our findings provide new evidence on the extent of plasticity of modular organisms and highlight the need to extend plasticity theories to include organisms with non-determinate, modular body types like fungi.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Beetles provide directed dispersal of viable spores of a keystone wood decay fungus

Wood decay fungi are considered to be dispersed by wind, but dispersal by animals may also be important, and more so in managed forests where dead wood is scarce. We investigated whether beetles could disperse spores of the keystone species Fomitopsis pinicola. Beetles were collected on sporocarps and newly felled spruce logs, a favourable habitat for spore deposition. Viable spores (and successful germination) of F. pinicola were detected by dikaryotization of monokaryotic bait mycelium from beetle samples. Viable spores were on the exoskeleton and in the faeces of all beetles collected from sporulating sporocarps. On fresh spruce logs, nine beetle species transported viable spores, of which several bore into the bark. Our results demonstrate that beetles can provide directed dispersal of wood decay fungi. Potentially, it could contribute to a higher persistence of some species in fragmented forests where spore deposition by wind on dead wood is less likely.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Invertebrate-induced priority effects and secondary metabolites control fungal community composition in dead wood

During decomposition of organic matter, microbial communities may follow different successional trajectories depending on the initial environment and colonizers. The timing and order of the assembly history can lead to divergent communities through priority effects. We explored how assembly history and resource quality affected fungal dead wood communities and decomposition, 1.5 and 4.5 years after tree felling. Additionally, we investigated the effect of invertebrate exclusion during the first two summers. For aspen (Populus tremula) logs, we measured initial resource quality of bark and wood, and surveyed the fungal communities by DNA metabarcoding at different time points during succession. We found that a gradient in fungal community composition was related to resource quality and discuss how this may reflect tolerance-dominance trade-offs in fungal life history strategies. As with previous studies, the initial amount of bark tannins was negatively correlated with wood decomposition rate over 4.5 years. The initial fungal community explained variation in community composition after 1.5, but not 4.5 years, of succession. Although the assembly history of initial colonizers may cause alternate trajectories in successional communities, our results indicate that the communities may easily converge with the arrival of secondary colonizers. We also identified a strong invertebrate-induced priority effect of fungal communities, even after 4.5 years of succession, thereby adding crucial knowledge to the importance of invertebrates in affecting fungal community development. By measuring and manipulating aspects of assembly history and resource quality that have rarely been studied, we expand our understanding of the complexity of fungal community dynamics.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

DNA metabarcoding reveals host-specific communities of arthropods residing in fungal fruit bodies

Biological communities within living organisms are structured by their hosts traits. How host traits affect biodiversity and community composition is poorly explored for some associations, such as arthropods within fungal fruit bodies. Using DNA metabarcoding, we revealed the arthropod communities in living fruit bodies of eleven wood-decay fungi from boreal forests and investigated how they were affected by different fungal traits. Arthropod diversity was higher in fruit bodies with a larger surface area-to-volume ratio, suggesting that colonisation is crucial to maintain arthropod populations. Diversity was not higher in long-lived fruit bodies, most likely because these fungi invest in physical or chemical defences against arthropods. Arthropod community composition was structured by all measured host traits, namely fruit body size, thickness, surface area, morphology and toughness. Notably, we identified a community gradient where soft and short-lived fruit bodies harboured more true flies, while tougher and long-lived fruit bodies had more oribatid mites and beetles, which might reflect different development times of the arthropods. Ultimately, close to 75% of the arthropods were specific to one or two fungal hosts. Besides revealing surprisingly diverse and host-specific arthropod communities within fungal fruit bodies, our study provided insight on how host traits structure communities.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

A mechanistic perspective of ecological networks highlights the contribution of alternative interaction strategies

O_LISpecies traits mediate ecological interaction outcomes and community structure. It is important, therefore, to identify the minimum number of traits required to characterise observed networks, i.e. the minimum dimensionality. Existing methods for estimating minimum dimensionality often lack three features commonly associated with a higher numbers of traits: a mechanistic description of observed interactions, alternative interaction modes (e.g. different feeding strategies such as active vs sit-and-wait feeding), and trait-mediated forbidden links. Omitting these features can lead to underestimation of the trait numbers involved, and therefore, minimum dimensionality. Here, we develop a minimum mechanistic dimensionality measure, accounting for these three features. C_LIO_LIThe only input required by our method is the observed network of interaction outcomes. We then assume how traits are mechanistically involved in alternative interaction modes. These unidentified traits are contrasted using pairwise performance inequalities between the interacting species. E.g. if a predator feeds upon a prey species via a typical predation mode, in each step of the predation sequence the predators performance must be greater than the preys. We construct a system of inequalities from all observed outcomes, which we attempt to solve with mixed integer linear programming. The minimum number of traits required for a feasible system of inequalities provides our dimensionality estimate. C_LIO_LIWe applied our method to 658 published empirical ecological networks including animal dominance, predator-prey, primary consumption, pollination, parasitism and seed dispersal networks, to compare with minimum dimensionality estimates when the three focal features are missing. Minimum dimensionality was typically higher when including alternative interaction modes (54% of empirical networks), forbidden interactions as trait-mediated interaction outcomes (92%), or a mechanistic perspective (81%), compared to network dimensionality estimates missing these features. C_LIO_LIOur method can reduce the risk of omitting essential traits that are involved mechanistically, in different interaction modes, or in failure outcomes. More accurate estimates will allow us to parameterise models to generate theoretical networks with a more realistic structure at the interaction outcome level. Thus, we hope our method can improve predictions of community structure and structure-dependent dynamics. C_LI

ecology↗