Leucocoprinus cretaceus temperature assessment

This is a review of observations of Leucocoprinus cretaceus with the temperatures for the location taken from www.timeanddate.com. The purpose is to assess seasonality in different locations and gauge the temperature tolerance of this species in regards to fruiting requirements and so this table is arranged by the month of observation. Only observations of mushrooms fruiting outside have been included. Observations from plant pots are collected in the plant pot mushrooms project and some observations of Leucocoprinus cretaceus fruiting inside buildings and structures have also been collected so these indoor observations could be separately assessed easily. In instances where the mushrooms are noted as growing from a compost pile in the description this is included in the location data since such an environment could increase local temperatures.

Observations have been manually reviewed and only included if I am satisfied that the species pictured is indeed L. cretaceus and not any of the possible lookalikes. As there are many observations for this species this table is not going to attempt to collect data for all of them but rather represents a random sample from a variety of locations. It was convenient to focus on locations with many observations over a wide period of time in order to expedite data entry.

Place names given are for the weather results rather than the observation location. In most cases they are the same but where observations are from small towns or wilderness locations situated right beside large population centres the name of the larger population centre may have been used since looking up small locations does not always result in finding temperature records. The data for smaller locations on timeanddate will be taken from stations in larger locations nearby anyway and whilst small town nams are generally searchable in America and Europe they often turned up no results in India and South America.

In some cases timeanddate is entirely missing weather data for some locations during some periods and so otherwise good observations have been excluded based on this lack of data. Where weather data is available but some is missing for that day a ? is included beside the temperature. For instance a low temperature of '7?' indicates that the night time temperatures for this location were missing and hence the lowest temperature recorded that day may have been lower but the high temperature can be presumed to be accurate since the rest of the data was present.

The lowest and highest number given are the result of reading the summary provided for that day which on timeanddate is broken into 4 time slots: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 with a low and high given for each period. The low and high given here represent the lowest and highest of these 8 figures given except in cases were a sudden, abnormal change in temperature is noted after the time given for the observation. ie. for an observation made at midday when the high was 28 and the low was 16 but a sudden drop occurred to 8 (far colder than any of the days prior) by 18:00 then this later temperature is excluded and the earlier low of 16 is used. A case like this is unusual and the low temperatures are usually representative of the early morning or overnight low before the mushroom was observed. Otherwise the time of the observation is not taken into account and the high or low used may represent a temperature after the observation was made unless, at a glance, this was obviously extreme compared to the days before. More accurate hour by hour temperatures are available for most entries on timeanddate though it would require more time spent per observation to look this up and exclude information from after the time of the observation.

The link to the timeanddate page is included for each entry in order that more detailed temperatures or weather data can be found quickly. ie. if an additional assessment were to be carried out at a later date to look for rain or storms prior to the observation. Assessing the temperature on the day the mushrooms were observed may not be the most reliable method of evaluating temperature requirements as it may be preferable to assess the days before the mushrooms were observed. This could provide a better idea of the temperatures needed to trigger growth and avoid the mushroom aborting however such an assessment would have to take into account the maturity of the mushrooms and their quality, ie. if aborting or growing poorly and so would be more complex and less reliable. Due to the tedious nature of copy pasting data into multiple fields it is possible that some errors may exist in this data however as the obervation number, username and location are included it provides some redundancy for fixing this. ie. it is possible that one field might not have been updated but unlikely all have not.

North America

South America

Europe

Australia and New Zealand

Asia

Assessment

This table may be periodically updated with new observations which improve the accuracy of the data. As of 26/09/23 it contains 200 observations. Copying this data into Excel and using the min, max and average functions (which automatically ignore data marked with ?) results in the following:

Observation 167425167 has the lowest temperature with -2°C so deserves closer scrutiny. This temperature was recorded during fog at 08:00 on the day of the observation in Paraná, Entre Rios, Argentina. The observation was made at 12:49 in Parque Nacional Pre Delta some 42 kilometers south of Paraná but timeanddate does not have a location for the park itself and for nearby Diamante and Strobel the weather given is the same so is presumably from the weather monitoring station in Paraná. The temperature rose to 3°C by 09:00 and then 11°C by 11:00 and it was 12-13°C at the time of the observation. Cold temperature were also recorded earlier in the day of 0°C from 04:00 to 07:00 and an overnight temperature of 1 or 2°C in the hours before. The two days prior to the observation had similar temperatures. The more distant weather monitoring station in Córdoba recorded even colder temperautres of -6°C on this day. The park is noted as having an annual average temperature of 19°C with a humid and tropical environment as a result of the river having a moderating influence.^[1]

It is therefore uncertain what temperature occurred in the park on this day but unless the park has a significantly different microclimate it was presumably cold. The level of maturity of the mushrooms suggests they started growing at least a day or two earlier so would have been exposed to the overnight temperatures.

The next lowest temperature was 6°C in observation 179607697 from Peru in January.

The minimum high of 14°C also comes from the observation with a -2°C low and a second observation has a potential high of 14°C but is lacking data. The next minimum high is 18°C.

The highest temperature of 42°C is from observation 160716481 from India in May. The observation was made at 12:30 and a more detailed look at the temperatures that day reveals 40°C at 11:30 and 42°C at 14:30 with no data provided in between. So the temperature during this observation can be assumed to be at least 40°C. Some of the less mature primordia are aborting as is seen by the yellowing and browning as well as the dry, shrivelling look. The older ones look a little dry with some browning developing and some intermediary ones have spliiting stems so they do not appear to be growing very well. The two days before saw high temperatures of 42 and 40°C however and it did not go below 26°C during this period so the mushrooms visible will have grown during some of this extreme heat. Numerous primordia aborting whilst a few grow large is not uncommon and it cannot be assessed whether this was the result of the heat though desiccation as a result of the extremes seems likely.

The next highest is 37°C with two observations, 86266647 and 77009421 in India at this temperature. Both obervations show good growth with no sign of distress and both were made a few hours after the highest temperature with the mushrooms mature enough that they must have developed before then.

Also of note is observation 69376855 recorded on the 17th of November 2018. The low and high temperatures of 24/32°C are fairly consistent across the month and nothing especially noteworth in themselves however on the day after the observation a sudden drop in temperature is recorded from 29°C with showers at 13:00 to 6°C and thunderstorms at 13:18 and then back up to 24°C with thunderstorms at 14:00. Similar is observed earlier in the month on the 6th with a drop from 31°C to 6°C with precipitation in a one hour period and then back up to 26°C. This same trend is seen in past weather data for the region during November and December often with a few such storms per month. It would be interesting to see what impact these cold snaps accompanied by rain and storms have on the fungus.

Observation 104687663 is interesting due to the presence of both L. cretaceus and L. birnbaumii near each other. This is not unique and is found in several observations but is suggestive of similar conditions being favourable for both species.

References

Posted on September 26, 2023 02:26 PM by mycomutant