Survey of macrofungal diversity and analysis of edaphic factors influencing the fungal community of church forests in Dry Afromontane areas of Northern Ethiopia

The Dry Afromontane forests in Northern Ethiopia have been cleared for agriculture and reduced to small and isolated fragments. Most of these forests are located around church territories and are they called church forests. The church forests are known to be biodiversity islands and provide key ecosystem services to local communities. However, to date, the fungal resources of these forests have not been assessed and, therefore, the contribution of fungi to their conservation value is unknown. In 2019, we investigated the fungal diversity of three Dry Afromontane church forests. In each forest, we established nine permanent plots (2 m x 50 m), which were surveyed weekly during the rainy season to quantify the fungal diversity and sporocarp production levels. Explanatory variables were also analyzed to determine their relationship with macrofungal species composition. We collected 13,736 sporocarps corresponding to 188 taxa. Of these, 81% were saprotrophic and 14% were ectomycorrhizal. Sixty-eight species were edible, including economically valuable species such as Tricholoma and Termitomyces. This suggests that these fragmented forest systems could be managed to provide valuable non-timber forest products such as mushrooms and socioeconomic benefits for local communities. Although many species were present in all three forests, some were only found in one forest, highlighting the importance of conserving individual forests. The correlation of the Shannon diversity indices of the two communities showed a positive trend in spite of the lack of correlation between their richness. Macrofungal communities as a whole were influenced by edaphic, spatial and climate variables. This study indicates that church forests support a wide diversity of fungi, including potentially novel fungal species, and highlights the need for forest managers to consider the importance of fungi in forest ecosystem management and to provide habitats that will maintain fungal diversity and sporocarp production when planning conservation strategies.