Growth sites of polypores from quantitative expert evaluation: Late-stage decayers and saprotrophs fruit closer to ground

- Models show airborne spore dispersal is strongly affected by spore release height.
- We studied how fruit body growth height is connected to other traits in polypores.
- Polypore experts provided consistent estimates of fruiting heights.
- Species preferring early decay stages and deciduous wood fruit higher.
- Species with large spores fruit higher than species with small spores.

Life history traits are key to why species occur when and where they do and how their populations will respond to environmental changes. However, dispersal-related traits of fungi are generally poorly known. We studied how spore release height from the ground, an important determinant of airborne dispersal, is connected to other traits in polypores. We collected expert evaluations of fruit body growth sites for 140 species and found that experts generally provided consistent estimates of height above the ground. Height was correlated with other traits: species fruiting on living trees, earlier decay stages and deciduous hosts tend to fruit higher above the ground. While our data do not allow mechanistic explanations, our study demonstrates the potential of expert knowledge and identifies fruit body height above the ground as one consistent trait relevant to species' life history strategies. We recommend a more comprehensive expert survey as one cost-efficient way towards a more trait-based fungal ecology.