Abstract:

Russula fungi are widely distributed in the world, form ectomycorrhizae with plants, and play an important role in biodiversity maintenance and community assembly in forest ecosystems. The Greater and Lesser Khinggan Mountains of China are one of main areas in organism spreading from tropic to temperate areas in the biogeographical studies, but there are few studies on ectomycorrhizal fungi from this area. In this study, 96 specimens of Russula collected from the Greater and Lesser Khinggan Mountains were identified by the analysis of ITS sequences and morphological characters. The phylogenetic tree was reconstructed based on ITS sequences of 146 representative Russula species from China and other countries. The results showed that there were 46 taxa of Russula in the Greater and Lesser Khinggan Mountains, including 37 species and nine unidentified taxa. The analysis of geographical components of the 37 Russula species from the Greater and Lesser Khinggan Mountains showed that 13 species were north temperate, eight were temperate-tropical, nine were Eurasian, and seven were cosmopolitan. This study suggests that there are high species diversity of Russula, and their dominant components are clearly north temperate but also with some unique elements.

Key words: macrofungi, diversity, phylogeny, geographic components