Ms Ema Corro2,3, Mr Roger MacRaild1, Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher2,4, Dr Andrew Thornhill2
1Moorabool Landcare Network, Moorabool, Australia, 2University of New England, Armidale, Australia, 3Mycommunity Applied Mycology, , Australia, 4Fungi for Land, , Australia
Biography:
Ema Corro is a founding member and coordinator of Mycommunity Applied Mycology. Her main area of interest is fungal ecology and how it relates to land management and has contributed to the Fungi for Land project. She recently finished her Master of Environmental Science and Management at UNE looking at using fungivorous animal scats to promote mycorrhizal fungi and plant-health in revegetation areas. She is coordinator of the Wild Fungi DNA project which aims to involve citizen-scientists using molecular methods to study fungi.
Abstract:
Australia has lost many ground-dwelling mammals that dispersed root-associated fungi. Commercial inoculants contain non-local species that may perform poorly or favour weeds. Most scat inoculation work has targeted ectomycorrhizal Eucalyptus hosts and obligate fungivores, whose scats are hard to obtain; generalist herbivore scats and grassland plants remain untested.
Initiated by the Moorabool Landcare Network, and supported by Mycommunity Applied Mycology, Fungi for Land and the University of New England, volunteers ran the glasshouse experiment using scats from Mt Rothwell Animal Sanctuary. Themeda triandra (C4 grass) and Eryngium ovinum (C3 forb) were inoculated with active or autoclaved Brush-Tailed Rock-Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) scat and grown for six months, with growth and leaf condition recorded monthly and water stress in the final month. Scat inoculum and roots from 64 plants was metabarcoded for 16S (bacteria), ITS2 (fungi) and SSU (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, AMF), alongside other native animal scats and inoculated plants from smaller trials.
Themeda in the active treatment grew taller and greener throughout, while Eryngium showed no height gain but retained more living leaves and better colour under drought. Root communities did not differ between treatments at harvest. However, plants whose root AMF community more closely resembled the scat grew significantly taller, while a stronger 16S scat signature predicted reduced growth, possibly through competition or pathogens. This is consistent with a head-start mechanism: earlier, higher-dose propagule delivery, with cross-contamination later closing the community gap but not the growth gap.
Scat-derived inoculum may be a practical, low-cost alternative for native-plant nurseries.