Unveiling Shifts in Hidden Macrofungal Diversity Under Forest Disturbance, with Necessary Taxonomic Updates

Impacts of forest disturbance on macrofungal diversity remain underexplored due to methodological limitations. Here we revisit a previously studied grazing experiment in the subtropical forests of South China using fungal ITS amplicon sequencing based on soil samples, aiming to assess whether the previous observed increase in sporocarp-based diversity is mirrored belowground and to provide taxonomic identities for these massive environmental sequences. After 2.6 years of grazing with 10 goats per hectare across three forest types (secondary mixed forests, dense-tree plantations and sparse-tree plantations), soil macrofungal communities exhibited increased alpha-diversity indices, corroborating our previous sporocarp-based findings while revealing a far larger pool of previously undetected taxa. These findings are consistent with the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, wherein moderate physical disturbance creates novel microhabitats that accommodate a broader array of macrofungal taxa. Equally notably, the majority of soil-derived sequences correspond to undescribed or ambiguous taxa, underscoring the fundamental knowledge gap in fungal taxonomy. Through cross-matching soil sequences with sporocarp specimens collected from both within and beyond the experimental plots, we describe and revise some taxa with morphological and molecular approaches, providing essential groundwork for future ecological, conservational and applied mycology studies.