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How Fungi Keeps Our Cities Clean and Healthy

By Anahi Tinajero

  Lichenized fungi are commonly used as indicators of air quality. (Photo by Richard Orr)

    The fungal community does not only help us understand the health of our cities, but also provides several ecosystem services that help in the sustainability of our environment. Unfortunately, the increase of urbanization has shown a decrease of biodiversity posing a threat to the multiple ecosystem services. Sustainable practices such as preserving the biodiversity of our fungal communities in urban areas are urgent to protecting these ecosystem services. Using fungal air samples as a bioindicator to monitor the health of the ecosystem and protecting the fungal community in urban areas can help us protect its biodiversity.
    The fungal community bring multiple complex ecosystem services to our cities. Mycorrhizal fungi facilitate nutrient and water uptake for plants, endophytic fungi protect plants from pathogen infections, and wood-decaying fungi help with deadwood decomposition, participating in the biogeochemical cycle of carbon and nitrogen. Interestingly, fungi can also be used as a bioindicator of ecosystem health in cities due to its sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances. Air sampling can capture fungal diversity changes, therefore, monitoring the health of our cities. The increasing fungal community may cause allergic symptoms, but very rarely do they ever cause allergic reactions, keeping the cities' and our health in mind. 
    Fungal communities do not only help us monitor the health of biodiversity in our cities, but they provide ecosystem services for our own benefit. The conservation of the fungal community should be considered to maintain our cities clean and healthy to be able to enjoy them at their full potential while protecting our planet.


Reference
Abrego, N., Crosier, B., Somervuo, P., Ivanova, N., Abrahamyan, A., Abdi, A., Hämäläinen, K., Junninen, K., Maunula, M., Purhonen, J., Ovaskainen, O. 2020. Fungal communities decline with urbanization—more in air than in soil. The ISME Journal. 1-10.
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Comments

  1. M MendezNovember 1, 2020 at 4:03 PM

    Using fungal biodiversity as a bioindicator for ecosystem health is not something we always think about. I think it would require the EPA or research institutions to conduct this, given the time and expertise needed to analyze fungal diversity and provide some meaning to it. Maybe one day we will see a rapid test that could be automated within a city's health department.

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