Author: Laurel Hamers / Source: Science News
A small endangered marsupial with a taste for truffles may be a linchpin in one kind of Australian forest — and the evidence is in the animal’s poop.
Northern bettongs feast on truffles, the meaty, spore-producing parts of certain fungi. Plenty of animals eat a selection of these subterranean orbs from time to time. But analyses of the scat from northern bettongs (Bettongia tropica) reveal that the marsupials eat truffles from a wider diversity of fungi species than other critters, including some that no other animals appear to favor, researchers report November 22 in Molecular Ecology.
That’s an important role because these truffle-producing fungi form beneficial relationships with tree roots, helping trees pull nutrients and moisture from soil. “There’s been a whole raft of published studies showing that those fungi give plants an edge,” says Andrew Claridge, an ecologist for the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service in Queanbeyan who wasn’t part of the study.
Australia’s eucalyptus forests host hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of truffle fungi species, says study coauthor Susan Nuske, an ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå. Different species seem to be specialized to associate with particular trees or perform certain roles, so maintaining that diversity is key. By spreading truffles’ spores via scat, bettongs help keep the fungal community diverse and, by extension, the forest healthy, say Nuske and her colleagues.
But bettongs, once so abundant that they were considered garden pests, are now at risk of extinction. The marsupials, which have kangaroo-like hind legs and prehensile tails, live only in a narrow band of habitat…
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