Diversity and annual fluctuations of culturable airborne fungi in Athens, Greece: a 4-year study

The diversity and the abundance of the culturable airborne fungi have been studied by a volumetric method in the city of Athens, for a period of 4 years. A total of 6,600 plates were exposed during 562 calendar days, and 70,583 colonies of fungi have been recovered and studied in detail. One hundred and forty-eight species in fifty-four genera of filamentous fungi were identified. A total of three hundred and twenty strains were isolated and maintained as reference material. The annual mean concentration of the total fungi was 538, 640, 694 and 638 CFU/m³, and the concentration range, 25–2,435, 117–2,822, 122–2,201 and 116–2,590 CFU/m³ for each year, respectively. There is no statistically significant year-to-year variation in the distribution patterns and in the annual mean concentrations of the total fungi. The diversity and the abundance of the total fungi and of the dominant genera Cladosporium, Aspergillus and Alternaria were increased, whereas those of Penicillium decreased during the warm months of each year. The majority of the species are newly reported as airborne from Greece. Also, 19 genera and 93 species are totally new records for this country. The species Acrodontium virellum, Aspergillus aculeatus, A. tubingensis, Circinella minor, C. umbellata, Cladosporium breviramosum, C. malorum, Drechslera tetramera, Paecilomyces crustaceus, Petriella guttulata, Rutola graminis and Sporotrichum pruinosum are reported as airborne for the first time worldwide.