ABSTRACT. A checklist of macrofungi was compiled for Indiana as part of a larger effort to document fungi within the state. Our study compiled records of Indiana fungi from digitized specimen data available online through the Mycology Collections data Portal (http://mycoportal.org). These data were supplemented with records from the scientific literature. While several small checklists of Indiana fungi exist, the majority of these being published previously in the Proceeding of the Indiana Academy of Science, our study represents the first to comprehensively compile all the available data on Indiana fungi. Overall, more than 19.000 records of Indiana fungi were examined, with 1410 species of macrofungi being documented in this publication. These species represent 24 fungal orders from two major phyla, with 757 species in this checklist being reported in the literature for the first time here. Our study also recovered records documenting other groups of Indiana fungi, such as microfungi, which will be covered in subsequent publications.

Keywords: Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, checklist, Eumycola, fungi, taxonomy

INTRODUCTION

A wide range of natural communities exist in Indiana, with six general ecoregions recognized by Woods and colleagues (1998): the Eastern Corn Belt Plains, Huron/Erie Lake Plains, Interior Plateau, Interior River Valleys and Hills, Central Corn Belt Plains, and Southern Michigan/Northern Indiana Drift Plains. While over half the land area of the state is now devoted to agriculture (Vilsack & Clark 2012), it was once largely forested, and the previously dominant oak-hickory and beech-maple plant communities persist primarily as isolated stands (Friesner 1936; Clark 1994; Whitaker et al. 2012). Although the majority of agricultural land in Indiana is devoted to row crops (Vilsack & Clark 2012), some areas in the state support a high level of vascular plant diversity. For example, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, encompassing some 6,000 ha, has nearly 1,200 native plant species (Wilhelm 1990) in a mosaic of habitats that include xeric sand dunes, sedge meadows, oak savanna, pannes, bogs, fens, kettle lakes, and mesic prairies. Considering the potential for tight linkages between vascular plants and their fungal counterparts (Van der Heijden et al. 1998), a high level of fungal diversity might also be expected across the state.

Members of the kingdom Eumycota (Fungi) are filamentous, or sometimes unicellular, heterotrophic organisms with absorptive nutrition. The diverse forms include mushrooms, rusts, smuts, and yeasts. Many fungal species (e.g., mycorrhizal forms) are essential symbiotic partners of vascular plants, providing them with nutrients such as phosphorus (Bolan 1991), while others are key in cycling carbon through the decay of organic matter (Lindahl et al. 2002). Recent research also suggests fungal pathogens are an increasing threat to the health of animals, plants, and even ecosystems (Fisher et al. 2012). Given this diversity of forms and of ecological roles, it is reasonable to expect fungal diversity to be vast, with estimates ranging from 1.5 to 5.1 million species worldwide (Blackwell 2011). In comparison to this extensive diversity, the number of described species (ca. 100,000) is proportionally low, and understanding of fungal diversity even in temperate regions,...