Marine mycogeography

Marine mycogeography (the study of geographical distribution of marine fungi) is a relatively recent field.``obligate marine fungi are those that grow and sporulate exclusively in a marine or estuarine habitat; facultative marine fungi are those from freshwater and terrestrial milieus able to grow and possibly also sporulate in the marine environment. Pirozynski (1968) reviewed the geographical distribution of fungi and discussed the merits and demerits of methods to study fungal distribution. 

Marine fungi colonize a range of organic substrata found in the sea. The first publication on marine fungi was that of Barghoorn& Linder (1944) and since then much research has been carried out. Many studies are descriptions of new species or lists of species collected in a given area, giving little indication of the frequency of occurrence or of the ecology of the fungi. Hughes (1974) has divided the oceans into five biogeographic temperature determined regions, namely arctic, temperate, subtropical, tropical and antarctic. Distribution maps for selected species were provided by Kohlmeyer (1983, 1987), Hyde and Lee (1995) and Jones and Alias (1997). In addition to the distribution maps comparisons of mycota among different mangrove sites within a country or major geographical region can also be made using similarity indices. Data on the distribution of marine fungi in the tropics and subtropics are scarce, because collections have been made predominantly in temperate areas (HUGHES, 1974; KOHLMEYER & KOHLMEYER, 1979; KOHLMEYER, 1983). Certain tropical habitats have been particularly neglected, for instance, the mangal (mangrove forests) and salt marshes.Many marine fungi also sporulate on sand grains (35 species; Jones and Mitchell, 1996) or other hard calcareous material like coral (20 species; Jones and Mitchell, 1996). Arenicolous fungi are generally found on sand associated with wood from which they derive their nutrients.