Abstract
We examined the soil microfungal community of the saline Arubotaim Cave, Israel. A total of 68 species from 28 genera were isolated. The most prominent features of the cave mycobiota were: the prevailing number of melanin-containing micromycetes; the abundant presence of the Aspergillus species; a comparatively large share of sexual ascomycetes; and the spatial and temporal variation of the mycobiota composition. Nine species were considered as a characteristic micromycete core for the cave. Many of the micromycetes isolated are distributed worldwide. This confirms the conclusion of many mycologists working in areas with saline and arid soils that there is no specific halophilous mycobiota characteristic for these soils.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 431-443 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Arid Environments |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2004 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We express our thanks to the Israeli Ministry of Absorption and the Ancell-Teicher Research Foundation for Genetics and Molecular Evolution for financial support of this research. We are very grateful to Dr. Tomas Pavlicek and Dr. Sophia Barinova for their kind help in sample collecting and temperature measuring.
Keywords
- Adaptive features
- Micromycetes
- Mycobiota
- Saline cave
- Species composition
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Ecology
- Earth-Surface Processes