Adapting the botanical landscape of Melbourne Gardens(Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria)in response to climate change

Botanic gardens around the world maintain collections of living plants for science, conservation, education, beauty and more. These collections change over time-in scope and content-but the predicted impacts of climate change will require a more strategic approach to the succession of plant species and their landscapes. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria has recently published a 'Landscape Succession Strategy'for its Melbourne Gardens, a spectacular botanical landscape established in 1846. The strategy recognizes that with 1.6 million visitors each year, responsibility for a heritage-listed landscape and the need to care for a collection of 8500 plant species of conservation and scientific importance, planting and planning must take into account anticipated changes to rainfall and temperature. The trees we plant today must be suitable for the climate of the twenty-second century. Specifically, the Strategy sets out the steps needed over the next twenty years to transition the botanic garden to one resilient to the climate modelled for2090. The document includes a range of practical measures and achievable(and at times somewhat aspirational) targets. Climate analogues will be used to identify places in Australia and elsewhere with conditions today similar to those predicted for Melbourne in 2090, to help select new species for the collection. Modelling of the natural and cultivated distribution of species will be used to help select suitable growth forms to replace existing species of high value or interest. Improved understanding of temperature gradients within the botanic garden, water holding capacity of soils and plant water use behaviour is already resulting in better targeted planting and irrigation. The goal is to retain a similar diversity of species but transition the collection so that by 2036 at least 75% of the species are suitable for the climate in 2090. Over the next few years we hope to provide 100% of irrigation water from sustainable water sources, and infrastructure will be improved to adapt to predicted higher temperatures and more climatic extremes. At all times there will be a strong focus on assisting the broader community in their response to climate change.

High-level classification of the Fungi and a tool for evolutionary ecological analyses

High-throughput sequencing studies generate vast amounts of taxonomic data.Evolutionary ecological hypotheses of the recovered taxa and Species Hypotheses are difficult to test due to problems with alignments and the lack of a phylogenetic backbone.We propose an updated phylum-and class-level fungal classification accounting for monophyly and divergence time so that the main taxonomic ranks are more informative.Based on phylogenies and divergence time estimates,we adopt phylum rank to Aphelidiomycota,Basidiobolomycota,Calcarisporiellomycota,Glomeromycota,Entomophthoromycota,Entorrhizomycota,Kickxellomycota,Monoblepharomycota,Mortierellomycota and Olpidiomycota.We accept nine subkingdoms to accommodate these 18 phyla.We consider the kingdom Nucleariae(phyla Nuclearida and Fonticulida)as a sister group to the Fungi.We also introduce a perl script and a newick-formatted classification backbone for assigning Species Hypotheses into a hierarchical taxonomic framework,using this or any other classification system.We provide an example of testing evolutionary ecological hypotheses based on a global soil fungal data set.

Evolution and future of urban ecological science:ecology in,of,and for the city

The contrast between ecology in cities and ecology of cities has emphasized the increasing scope of urban ecosystem research.Ecology in focuses on terrestrial and aquatic patches within cities,suburbs,and exurbs as analogs of non-urban habitats.Urban fabric outside analog patches is considered to be inhospi-table matrix.Ecology of the city differs from ecology in by treating entire urban mosaics as social-ecolog-ical systems.Ecology of urban ecosystems incorporates biological,social,and built components.Originally posed as a metaphor to visualize disciplinary evolution,this paper suggests that the contrast has conceptual,empirical,and methodological contents.That is,the contrast constitutes a disciplinary or“local”paradigm shift.The paradigm change between ecology in and ecology of represents increased complexity,moving from focus on biotic communities to holistic social-ecological systems.A third paradigm,ecology for the city,has emerged due to concern for urban sustainability.While ecology for includes the knowledge generated by both ecology in and ecology of,it considers researchers as a part of the system,and acknowledges that they may help envision and advance the social goals of urban sustainability.Using urban heterogeneity as a key urban feature,the three paradigms are shown to contrast in five important ways:disciplinary focus,the relevant theory of spatial heterogeneity,the technology for representing spatial structure,the resulting classification of urban mosaics,and the nature of application to sustainability.Ecology for the city encourages ecologists to engage with other specialists and urban dwellers to shape a more sustainable urban future.

Species diversity of Basidiomycota

Fungi are eukaryotes that play essential roles in ecosystems.Among fungi,Basidiomycota is one of the major phyla with more than 40,000 described species.We review species diversity of Basidiomycota from five groups with different lifestyles or habitats:saprobic in grass/forest litter,wood-decaying,yeast-like,ectomycorrhizal,and plant parasitic.Case studies of Agaricus,Cantharellus,Ganoderma,Gyroporus,Russula,Tricholoma,and groups of lichenicolous yeast-like fungi,rust fungi,and smut fungi are used to determine trends in discovery of biodiversity.In each case study,the number of new species published during 2009–2020 is analysed to determine the rate of discovery.Publication rates differ between taxa and reflect different states of progress for species discovery in different genera.The results showed that lichenicolous yeast-like taxa had the highest publication rate for new species in the past two decades,and it is likely this trend will continue in the next decade.The species discovery rate of plant parasitic basidiomycetes was low in the past ten years,and remained constant in the past 50 years.We also found that the establishment of comprehensive and robust taxonomic systems based on a joint global initiative by mycologists could promote and standardize the recognition of taxa.We estimated that more than 54,000 species of Basidiomycota will be discovered by 2030,and estimate a total of 1.4–4.2 million species of Basidiomycota glob-ally.These numbers illustrate a huge gap between the described and yet unknown diversity in Basidiomycota.

Urban megaregions and the continuum of urbanity-emb racing new frameworks or extending the old?

Urban areas are now highly interconnected with each other and with other landscapes through the global exchange of materials,resources,and people.These urban land teleconnections mean that the interrelationships between urbanization and land-cover change are no longer tightly linked in geographic space(Seto et al.2012).Actions at one or multiple urban centers can have concentrated or dispersed impacts on more distant landscapes;and these impacts are likely to increase over time.By 2030,Fragkias et al.(2013)predict that two thirds of the urban landscapes will have been built in the preceding 30 years.Accommodating the rise in human urban populations in the face of glob-al climate change without compromising ecosystem sustainability and resilience presents an enormous challenge.Finding solutions requires a concerted shift in our thinking,not the least of which is the frameworks we use to con-ceptualize an urban world.

FungalTraits:a user-friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

The cryptic lifestyle of most fungi necessitates molecular identification of the guild in environmental studies.Over the past decades,rapid development and affordability of molecular tools have tremendously improved insights of the fungal diversity in all ecosystems and habitats.Yet,in spite of the progress of molecular methods,knowledge about functional properties of the fungal taxa is vague and interpretation of environmental studies in an ecologically meaningful manner remains challenging.In order to facilitate functional assignments and ecological interpretation of environmental studies we introduce a user friendly traits and character database FungalTraits operating at genus and species hypothesis levels.Combining the information from previous efforts such as FUNGuild and FunFun together with involvement of expert knowledge,we reannotated 10,210 and 151 fungal and Stramenopila genera,respectively.This resulted in a stand-alone spreadsheet dataset covering 17 lifestyle related traits of fungal and Stramenopila genera,designed for rapid functional assignments of environmental stud-ies.In order to assign the trait states to fungal species hypotheses,the scientific community of experts manually categorised and assigned available trait information to 697,413 fungal ITS sequences.On the basis of those sequences we were able to summarise trait and host information into 92,623 fungal species hypotheses at 1%dissimilarity threshold.

Correction to:FungalTraits:a user friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

Correction to:Fungal Diversity(2020)105:116 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-020-00466-2 There were errors in the name of author LászlóG.Nagy and in affiliation no.31 in the original publication.The original article has been corrected.