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Introduced fungi of North America and elsewhere


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This is not something most people or even most mushroom enthusiasts think about, but working in a field that is impacted by non-native species, I do. I did some quick googling but not an intensive search, but didn't come up with a whole lot. I'd like to create a list of introduced fungi of North America, since my quick search suggests one doesnt exist.  I know that several Amanita  have been introduced into Africa, which is what made me start thinking. 

What introduced species are you aware of in North America?

Are any invasive or potentially invasive, with potential of doing ecologic harm to native species including mychorrhizal hosts? Are any poisonous?

Does escape of cultivated non-native species pose a risk to closely related or ecolgically similar native species?  Is there any evidence of such  "escaped" fungi, here or elsewhere? This is one reason I'm wary of buying certain mushroom cultivars.  Deliberately transporting such things across state and national boundaries seems like an inherently bad idea from an ecological perspective.

I will add to the list here as new ones are verified

Introduced Species of North America                     

Amanita phalloides  (Vaill ex.Fr.)
Pleurotus citrinopileatus Singer

Suillus luteus (L.)

Elsewhere

Boletus edulis Bull- South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. 

Suillus luteus (L.) South America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand

 

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6 hours ago, Tasso said:

Amanita phalloides is an introduced species. http://americanmushrooms.com/deathcap.htm

Interesting, I knew it was introduced elsewhere but didnt know it was also introduced here. That led me to this abstract, which states its the only currently known (2009) invasive ectomycorrhizal mushroom in NA. But surely there will be more.   

 

Mol Ecol. 2009 Mar;18(5):817-33. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2008.04030.x.

The ectomycorrhizal fungus Amanita phalloides was introduced and is expanding its range on the west coast of North America.

 

The deadly poisonous Amanita phalloides is common along the west coast of North America. Death cap mushrooms are especially abundant in habitats around the San Francisco Bay, California, but the species grows as far south as Los Angeles County and north to Vancouver Island, Canada. At different times, various authors have considered the species as either native or introduced, and the question of whether A. phalloides is an invasive species remains unanswered. We developed four novel loci and used these in combination with the EF1α and IGS loci to explore the phylogeography of the species. The data provide strong evidence for a European origin of North American populations. Genetic diversity is generally greater in European vs. North American populations, suggestive of a genetic bottleneck; polymorphic sites of at least two loci are only polymorphic within Europe although the number of individuals sampled from Europe was half the number sampled from North America. Endemic alleles are not a feature of North American populations, although alleles unique to different parts of Europe were common and were discovered in Scandinavian, mainland French, and Corsican individuals. Many of these endemic European haplotypes were found together at single sites in California. Early collections of A. phalloides dated prior to 1963 and annotated using sequences of the ITS locus proved to be different species of Amanita. The first Californian collections that we confirmed as A. phalloides were made from the Del Monte Hotel (now the Naval Postgraduate School) in Monterey, and on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938 and in 1945. These historical data are used in combination with data on A. phalloides' current distribution to estimate a rate of spread for A. phalloides in California. Many species of ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi have been introduced across and among continents, but with this evidence, the death cap becomes the only known invasive EM fungus in North America.

 

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  • 10 months later...

The Golden Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus citrinopileatus, seems to have been introduced into several places in eastern North America, if some of the identifications discussed in these Web pages are correct.

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On 9/12/2019 at 8:05 AM, Dig said:

Psilocybe sp., especially P. cubensis, should be on both lists.

In which countries is it introduced? It appears to be very widespread naturally, from N and S America to Asia.

 

22 hours ago, vitog said:

The Golden Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus citrinopileatus, seems to have been introduced into several places in eastern North America, if some of the identifications discussed in these Web pages are correct.

 

Excellent, thank you. They are indeed established and perhaps invasive in North America now. If anyone finds it refer to this website and consider submitting samples

https://andibruce.com/golden-oysters/

 

I've started a list in the first post of this thread which I'll edit as needed

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  • 2 weeks later...

So the other day Dave w helped me identify A Neolentinus lepideus I found, when I read up on it I noticed it is listed as appearing on fallen pines in eastern na but primarily on cut timber in western na, made me ponder if it was maybe introduced in the west, from the east, absolutely nothing beyond that to back my pondering up though. Interesting topic!

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  • 1 year later...

I'm not sure if the taxonomy of blue oysters, Pleurotus columbinus, is settled (I've also seen it described as a subspecies or variety of P. ostreatus), but this map shows an occurrence in Veracruz Mexico and Mauritius. My understanding was that its a European taxon.  So I'm not sure these represent introductions but I'm throwing it out there as possible

https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20m?kind=Pleurotus+columbinus

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