eMyCo – Ectomycorrhizal Community Database

Ectomycorrhizal Community Database” (EMyCo) is a tool planned for gathering data concerning the structure and characters of ectomycorrhizal communities, in order to study and compare those present in different environments, particularly in the Mediterranean area. The project is made up by independent surveys, each one describing a community and its growth habitat. The base components of survey are elementary taxonomical units, each described by a simplified set of morphological data relative to mycorrhizas, and by ITS sequences of the symbiotic fungus. Values of abundance and frequency of each unit belonging to the community are calculated. eMyCo presents a data search system suitable to compare different surveys investigations sharing one or more parameters. This approach makes easy to obtain in-depth information about the ecological preferences of any ectomycorrhizal fungal species, as well as the relationships established with other species in the community. Moreover, eMyCo allows calculating some ecological indices of a community and comparing those of different communities. Finally, eMyCo may be used also for studying spacetemporal variations of such communities, so providing a useful tool to recognize bio-indicators of the forest health state.