BIOGEOGRAPHIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE MACROFUNGI OF TEMPERATE EASTERN ASIA AND EASTERN NORTH-AMERICA

Eastern North America and temperate eastern Asia reportedly share a re latively high number of taxa of macrofungi (mushrooms and relatives), including a number of taxa that have putative eastern North America - temperate eastern Asia disjunct distributions. These reports have been used to imply an affinity between the mycota (fungal equivalent of fl ora and fauna) of the two regions. To date, however, this affinity has not been examined in detail. A comparison of north temperate macrofun gal mycotas was undertaken to examine the similarity between these reg ions. We used two methods in this study: (i) direct comparison of taxo n lists and (ii) calculation of the Simpson Coefficient of similarity from lists of selected taxa. These analyses were based on field work, herbarium records, and published taxonomic treatments for Amanita, Lac tarius, Ramaria, and Boletaceae. Results of these analyses document th at taxonomic similarity between eastern North America and temperate ea stern Asia mycotas can be quite high. In all cases, the calculated sim ilarity values for eastern North America - temperate eastern Asia comp arisons are higher than those between either region of North America a nd Europe or between western North America and eastern Asia. Furthermo re, the eastern North American and temperate eastern Asian disjunct di stributions of macrofungi are usually limited to the level of species or lower.