ONE-YEAR MONITORING OF THE AIRBORNE FUNGAL COMMUNITY IN A SUBURB OF TURIN (ITALY) AND ASSESSMENT OF ITS FUNCTIONAL RELATIONS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT

The composition and concentration of airborne fungal propagules are pr obably determined by many interrelated environmental factors, such as temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, rain fall and gas pollutants. The importance of these variables was assesse d in an outdoor sampling survey conducted at regular intervals for 12 months at a single site in Turin. Samples were collected with a single -stage volumetric sieve sampler on potato dextrose agar supplemented w ith 15 mg l(-1) streptomycin and 50 mg l(-1) chloramphenicol. Canonica l Correspondence Analysis showed that the four ordination axes account ed for 93.5% of the variance in relationships between fungal entities present in more than 20% of samples and the environmental variables. T he Monte Carlo permutation test demonstrated that the ordination was h ighly significant (P = 0.01). The community's qualitative and quantita tive composition mainly depended on the factors that have the greatest influence on Turin's climate, i.e., in descending order, temperature, relative humidity and rainfall. The relative importance of these envi ronmental variables on different groups of fungi was assessed. Wind sp eed positively correlated with the fungi producing conidia of larger s izes.