Ecology and Distribution of Desert Truffles in the Australian Outback

Abstract

The ten major deserts of Australia collectively cover nearly 1.4 million km². Of these ten, collections of desert truffles have been reported only from the Great Sandy Desert (11 collections), Tanami Desert (4), Great Victoria Desert (1) and Simpson Desert (1). The Gibson Desert additionally is represented by unvouchered reports. This sparse number of collections clearly does not reflect either the abundance or range of any of the seven species currently known from these vast landscapes or even the total number of species that might occur there. Although Australian Aborigines have lived in and widely explored these deserts for tens of thousands of years and traditionally treasured truffles as food, scientific exploration by Euro-Australians began only in the mid-nineteenth century and continued only sporadically. As a consequence, the few locations for desert truffles from these areas may be an artefact of limited survey. More recently, many features of Australian deserts have been described and mapped by remote sensing techniques, but the overwhelming majority of the 1.4 million km² still remain unexplored for truffles. Even given limited effort, six genera of truffles have been found in these deserts: Elderia, Mycoclelandia and Ulurua are endemic there; Horakiella and Reddellomyces are endemic to Australia; and Mattirolomyces also occurs in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, semiarid habitats of southern Europe and semiarid to desert landscapes of the southern USA and Mexico. All seven species represented in these genera are endemic to Australia, six to deserts and semiarid habitats.