Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts

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Biodiversity of indigenous tussock grassland sites in Otago, Canterbury and the central North Island. V. Penicillia and aspergilli

M. E. di Menna^1,*, S. T. Sayer¹, B. I. P. Barratt², N. L. Bell¹, C. M. Ferguson², and R. J. Townsend³

¹AgResearch Ltd, Ruakura Research Centre, Private Bag 3123, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand.

²AgResearch Ltd, Invermay Agricultural Centre, Private Bag 50034, Mosgiel 9053, New Zealand.

³AgResearch Ltd, Lincoln, PO Box 60, Lincoln 7640, New Zealand.

^*Author for correspondence: margaret.dimenna@agresearch.co.nz

Abstract    In the course of a series of investigations into the biodiversity of indigenous tussock grasslands, penicillia and aspergilli were isolated from soil samples from four locations: Deep Stream and Mt Benger in Otago, Tukino in the central North Island and Cass in Canterbury. Samples were collected in the summers of 2003 and 2005 and, at each locality, were taken from sites under indigenous tussock grassland, under oversown tussock grassland and under pasture cultivated from tussock grassland. Isolations were made on potato-glucose-chlortetracycline agar plates inoculated with soil suspensions. Thirty-six Penicillium species were recovered, all cosmopolitan, and of the 12 most common, 10 species: P. canescens, P. janthinellum, P. janczewskii, P. jensenii, P. lividum, P. loliense, P. melinii, P. miczynskii, P. sclerotiorum and P. simplicissimum were isolated from samples from all four locations but P. montanense and P. novae-zeelandiae were not recovered from Deep Stream or Mt Benger. P. lividum and P. sclerotiorum were recovered mainly from samples from indigenous sites and P. jensenii from oversown or cultivated sites. In other countries, some of these species have been associated with forest-grassland rather than grassland soils and it was thought possible that they were relics associated with pre-human forest vegetation which may have covered the localities. At the subgenus, not species, level, however, the pattern was typical of grassland, not forest, soils, with the subgenus Furcatum dominant. Six of the common species are known to have the potential to produce tremorgens, neurotoxins known to cause incoordination when ingested by mammals but with little investigated effects on invertebrates. Aspergillus cervinus was the only Aspergillus species recovered, only from Tukino and principally from samples from the indigenous sites.

Keywords    aspergilli; Cass; Deep Stream; Mt Benger; penicillia; soil; tremorgenicity; Tukino; tussock grassland

R07003; Received 15 March 2007; accepted 2 August 2007; Online publication date 17 August 2007

Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Volume 37, Number 3, September, 2007, pp 131–137

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