NSFGEO-NERC: Fungi in a Warmer World

Overview
Understanding how ecosystems will adapt due to climate change involves modelling future
scenarios and making inferences from long-term datasets. Paleoclimate research, specifically
from the Cenozoic provides an invaluable source of long-term data that can be used to
understand future climate change. A knowledge gap exists in that no long-term and large-scale
information on how fungi have responded to past climate change prevents understanding how
fungal ecosystems in different regions will change in the future.
The MMCO was the warmest interval of the Neogene and is potentially an analogue for future
warming. A base-line knowledge of global vegetation exists for this interval, but the lack of
fossil fungal data inhibits a full understanding of biodiversity and terrestrial carbon cycle
dynamics during this potential analogue. Modern ecological data suggests fungal diversity
should decrease with increasing temperatures, but fungal biodiversity is highest in warm biomes.
This conflicting information could be due to unforeseen long-term changes that are impossible to
investigate on human timescales. The presence of fossil fungi in sedimentary sequences provides
a reliable proxy for investigating how fungi respond to warmer global temperatures. No existing
works examine fungal ecosystem services or biodiversity in the Neogene. Without an in-depth
understanding of past fungal community structure, function, and interactions in warmer-thanpresent
conditions, it is impossible to predict future changes.
To fill the knowledge gap, we propose providing the first global view of fungal biodiversity and
ecosystem services during an interval of geologic time that is in line with future warming
scenarios. Specifically, we will generate and analyze a global-scale data set of fungal
biodiversity from MMCO sediments using fungal palynology. Existing palynological slides and
residues will be re-examined for fungal content (East Asia [China], Southeast Asia [Philippines,
Malaysia, Thailand], South Asia [Indus Fan], Europe, SE North America). Field work will
involve detailed sampling of exceptionally preserved leaf-, wood- or coal-bearing terrestrial sites
in Australia (year 1), South America (year 1), Africa (year 2), and North America (year 2).

Intellectual Merit
We will generate six gold open access presentation detailing 1) fungal occurrences and
ecological tolerances for each of the four study sites; 2) biogeography of fungal ecology during
the MMCO; and 3) new climate reconstructions for the MMCO taking fungi into account. We
will also generate a large database, entitled FUNgal Cenozoic Köppen Information (FUNCKI),
that will permit others to use fungal ecological tolerances in relation to Köppen bioclimate zones
to reconstruct past ecosystems using fungal palynomorphs. Additionally, we anticipate
presentations at multiple conferences a year over the three-year project.

Broader Impacts
We will strive to increase equable access to science through gold open access publication. We
will utilize gender neutral recruitment strategies and strive to recruit minorities for Postdoctoral,
doctoral, and undergraduate positions on the project where possible. We will build a ludic
pedagogical outreach and elementary-level STEM engagement package that will be disseminated
to teachers and primary students in the US, UK, South Africa, Argentina, and Peru. We will host
a special session on fungal palynology at the 2022 European Palaeobotany and Palynology
Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We will provide a fungal palynology workshop with free-toparticipants
materials at the 2023 annual meeting of AASP-The Palynological Society in
Lexington, KY.