Field of Science

The Origins of a Closed Bolete

Boletes are a distinctive group of mushrooms in which the underside of the fruiting body is covered by tubular pores instead of gills. Though boletes are classified in the fungal order Boletales, not all members of this order produce bolete-type fruiting bodies (as exemplified in an earlier post). Consider, for example, the case of Gastrosuillus.

'Gastrosuillus' sp., copyright Danny Miller.


Gastrosuillus was recognised in 1989 for a small group of species found in North America that closely resembled members of the more typical bolete genus Suillus (the slippery jacks) except for their production of secotioid fruiting bodies, in which the pores are distorted and do not form a flattened plane, and may remain covered by an external membrane (secotioid fruiting bodies may be considered an intermediate form between typical mushrooms and the gastroid fruiting bodies of fungi such as puffballs). All Gastrosuillus species were extremely rare, known only from single locations or even single collections. Gastrosuillus suilloides and G. amaranthii were found in California, G. imbellus in Oregon, and G. laricinus in New York State. All four were found on the ground in conifer forest; fruiting bodies of G. suilloides could be buried (Bessette et al. 2000).

From its inception, a close relationship with and possibly even derivation from members of the genus Suillus seems to have been on the cards for Gastrosuillus. It should be noted that Suillus was not the only bolete genus with a secotioid satellite: as Gastrosuillus was to Suillus, so Gastroboletus was to Boletus, and Gastroleccinum was to Leccinum. So it should have come as little surprise when a molecular analysis of Gastrosuillus species by Kretzer & Bruns (1997) found them to be nested within Suillus, nor forming a single clade within that genus. Instead, the western species were well separated from the New York G. laricinus. As a result, Kretzer & Bruns advocated the synonymisation of the two genera.

Typical form of larch bolete Suillus grevillei, copyright Luridiformis.


But the demotions didn't stop there. Not only was Gastrosuillus laricinus nested molecularly within Suillus, it appeared to be nested within a particular species, S. grevillei (conversely, the California species form a distinct lineage that is, so far as we know, entirely secotioid; the Oregon G. imbellus has not been examined molecularly owing to difficulties in extracting DNA from the single known specimen). The sole known location for G. laricinus lies within the range of S. grevillei, with the two species having been found in close proximity, and the indications were that G. laricinus was a very recent derivative of S. grevillei or possibly even a mere growth variant. Again, this is not entirely without precedent. Secotioid variants have been recorded of other mushroom species, and secotioid-like forms of the agaricoid mushroom Lentinus tigrinus have even been shown to be the result of a recessive allele of a single gene. Kretzer & Bruns (1997) therefore suggested that G. laricinus be synonymised entirely with S. grevillei. This action does not appear to have gained universal acceptance (for instance, the two are provisionally treated as distinct by Bessette et al., 2000) but is certainly worthy of consideration.

REFERENCES

Bessette, A. E., W. C. Roody & A. R. Bessette. 2000. North American Boletes: A color guide to the fleshy pored mushrooms. Syracuse University Press.

Kretzer, A., & T. D. Bruns. 1997. Molecular revisitation of the genus Gastrosuillus. Mycologia 89 (4): 586–589.

5 comments:

  1. So just the equivalent of a rose becoming a double flowered type?

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    1. If by that you mean not as big a change as it appears on the surface, then maybe. Aren't double flowers usually infertile, though? Secotioid mushrooms are still fertile though they may not disperse spores as well as open mushrooms.

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    2. I think there is a range in roses, not all types have all the reproductive parts converted into petals. I did mean a simple genetic change of the reproductive organ development that is actually more superficial than it looks.

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  2. If secotioidity is bad for spore dispersal, and they're rare and polyphyletic, it seems tempting to regard them as simply pathological?

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    1. The possibility has certainly been entertained, at least for those cases where both secotioid and non-secotioid forms are found in a single species. However, it has also been suggested that there may be situations where secotioid forms are advantageous. For instance, they may survive better in drier habitats where the external membrane may help conserve moisture (in which case, it is interesting that the secotioid Suillus are all known from upland conifer forest). Possibly either alternative may apply depending on the species.

      To consider the Suillus grevillei-Gastrosuillus laricinus case described in the post: it is certainly possible that 'G. laricinus' is just a developmental abnormality of S. grevillei. But then why is the deviant form only known from one location and not more broadly over the species' range? Is this simply a vagary of genetic drift, or is there something more systematic going on?

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