Airborne fungal spore load and season timing in the Central and Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey explained by climate conditions and land use

Abstract The widespread fungal aeroplankton comprises numerous plant pathogens and allergenic components. Here, we present the first study describing the airborne spore composition in the Central and Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey against the background of meteorological variables and land use. This region is climatically diverse and there are large differences in altitude and land cover. Using multivariate statistical techniques, we assessed the combined effects of the main weather factors on the airborne spore count and temporal patterns of spore season for 30 fungal taxa in five provinces with three different climate types. Moreover, we combined meteorological and land use data to search for potential source areas of airborne spores recorded at the study sites. Spore season start and peak dates substantially varied between sites (maximally 130 days between western and eastern part of the study area – for Boletus mean start date), however for most of the taxa investigated the season ended at a similar time at different sites. All the meteorological variables included in redundancy analysis accounted for 10.8–48.9% of the total variance in the fungal spore data, with the highest value in sites with continental climate. Daily mean air temperature was the most important variable and significantly correlated with the daily count of all the spore types (0.11 ≤ rs ≤ 0.84). However, when temperature range was calculated for three large, percentile-based spore count clusters it turned out that between 17% (subtropical climate) and 56% (continental climate) of the taxa showed no difference in temperature between low and high counts. Finally, based on combination of wind conditions and land use data we identified grasslands, croplands and coniferous forests as the main potential sources of fungal spores in the study area, and suggested that spores from the forests may be transported over longer distances than from open areas.