Mycoblitz in Benin : a lab in a backpack

Mieke.Verbeken@ugent.be

Project Summary

Climate change and human pressure are leading to habitat loss and habitat shifts and with these habitats, species are threatened and go extinct. Sudanian woodlands represent a vulnerable ecosystem. With the forests. many ecosystem services are under severe threats leading to fatal consequences for the local populations whose livelihood is supported at 80% by the forest Fungal diversify is not only enormous compared to other groups of organisms, but also relatively unknown on the one hand and indispensable for ecosystem functioning on the other hand. Herewith, we want to tackle the problem by investigating the fungal-plant partnership with up to date and easy transportable technics and its potential to assess fungal diversity and relations. Lowcost miniaturized scientific equipment can be combined with our taxonomic expertise to rapidly assess biodiversity against the backdrop of a changing world with challenging threats. We will fill a backpack with tools to perform a Mycoblitz in the subtropical forests of Benin, both morphologically and molecularly. We will train experts of different countries in West-Africa to use these novel and up-to-date techniques, and this way we hope to understand and monitor diversity of the main players (the ectomycorrhizal fungi!) in these important ecosystems. By using the forests in Benin for this training we have the advantage of working in one of the best studied forests in tropical Africa. This way we can test out the reliability of our molecular approach based on extraction and analysis of environmental DNA. It also allows us to compare the current data with previous records and hence understand how a changing environment influences the biodiversity. We will focus on the mycorrhizal network, a sine qua non for the trees to survive. This will be translated to guidelines to promote forest protection and restoration.

Project duration: 36 months

1 September 2023