Here in Florida, we’ve been seeing a lot of this lately: gorgeous spalting in hardwood logs caused by infestations of the Asian ambrosia beetle Ambrosidmus minor, and its wood-decaying symbiont Flavodon ambrosius. Finding such a log was a rare treat when I first arrived in Gainesville 3 years ago, but now we can find logs like this on most days in the field. Flavodon is an aggressive wood decayer (see Kasson et al 2016), but does its association with beetles give it an edge to out compete native decayers? A few serendipitous observations suggest it might. Pine wood cubes inoculated with the native pine decayer Ganoderma meredithiae (top row) were over-run when co-inoculated with Flavodon (bottom row).
And, sweetgum logs harvested last November are now producing beautiful orange flushes of the native hardwood decayer Stereum complicatum (logs on left, and close up picture). However, those that Michelle Jusino and I inoculated with Flavodon bare not a single Stereum fruiting body (logs on right)!
Could this recent introduction and explosion of non-native, decay-vectoring beetles displace some of the beautifully diverse native macro fungi of southeastern forests? And what effects might these changes have organic matter turnover and carbon dynamics?
Read more here – Li_etal_Flavodon_2017