Primary basidiospore charge and taxonomy of Agaricomycetes

This article deals with the polarity of electrostatic charges that are carried on ballistic basidiospores after their liberation from fruiting bodies. The spores were collected by placing a portable device beneath the basidiome and allowing them to fall in a horizontal homogeneous electrostatic field, created by vertical parallel plane electrodes. Thus, the experimental setup enabled to investigate the primary charges, the charges present on spores immediately after the release from spore bearing cells. Spores of 135 basidiomes of 50 species of hymenomycetous fungi were collected in various natural conditions. The non-turgescent (drying up, collapsing or ceasing to sporulate) basidiomes were excluded from the taxonomical analysis; the 128 turgescent basidiomes (223 spore samples) of 47 species were taxonomically analyzed. These species represented eight orders (Agaricomycetes, Basidiomycota), covering 21 families and 36 genera. The analysis showed that the spore charges were distributed according to the polarity similarly in all samples in a species, and in a genus. In most cases also genera of one family had the same type of polarity distribution of spore charges. Possibly all taxa from species to monophyletic families are characterized by specific type of polarity of the primary electrostatic charge of basidiospores. Depending on the taxonomical group, all spore charges were negative, positive, or both negative and positive charges were present. This information could be useful in investing the ballistosporic discharge mechanism and for constructing higher-level phylogeny.