Macrofungi in early stages of forest regeneration in Tasmania's southern forests

The present study compares the macrofungi at three study sites in the lowland wet eucalypt forest of southern Tasmania, all in early stages of regeneration, two from silvicultural treatments and one from wildfire. Although not part of a designed experiment, the three areas provided an unbroken, partially overlapping time-line in which macrofungi were recorded during the first 38 months of their development after disturbance and/or fire. Two of the three regenerating units had adjacent mature forest, the macrofungi of which were markedly different from those in the regeneration, the latter being dominated by opportunistic, predominantly saprotrophic species and very low in the symbiotic basidiomycetous ectomycorrhizal species that are abundant in the soils of mature forests. Studies such as these assist in a growing understanding of the nature of the early successional mycota in the southern forests of Tasmania.