Some Mycetozoa ( Myxomycetes ) Members from Zorkun High Plateau ( Osmaniye )

Myxomycete samples collected from 4 different localities from Zorkun Plateau (Osmaniye-Turkey) between 20142016. As a result of field and laboratory studies 28 species belonging to 9 families and 16 genera were determined. Among them, seven species were collected only from nature, 16 were obtained by Moist Chamber Technique in laboratory, and 5 species were obtained both from nature and by Moist Chamber Technique. Echinostelium minutum, Cribraria cancellata, Didymium difforme, Didymium squamulosum, Physarum album, and Arcyria cinerea are the most common species. Ten species were found to be common and 12 are rare or occasional. Species/genus ratio (S/G) is 1.75. The determined species are given together with habitats, substrates, coordinates, collection dates, voucher numbers and prevalencies.


Introduction
Mycetozoa; plasmodial slime moulds; Myxomycetes; a small group of organisms with amorphous, multinucleate and protoplasmic mass and about 994 species world-wide (Lado, 2017).Two hundred and sixty two 262 species have been reported from Turkey (Sesli et al., 2016).Molecular and physiological studies support the classification of myxomycetes within eukaryotic organisms in the kingdom Protoctista (Everhart and Keller, 2008).Plasmodial slime molds are generally found on decaying or living plant materials.Mostly cosmopolitan, several microhabitats for these species have also been reported in forest ecosystems.
Osmaniye is situated in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Turkey with a surface area of 3280 km², and surrounded by Gaziantep to the east, Hatay to the south, Adana to the west and Kahramanmaraş to the north.Southeastern parts are also bordered by the Amanos Mountains, extending from the port of Iskenderun to the east, while northwestern parts are bordered by Toros Mountains.Osmaniye has a Mediterranean climate.Summers are very hot and dry while the winters are cool and wet (Anonymous, 2017).The Zorkun high plateau is located in the most eastern side of the Mediterranean region within Osmaniye province (Turkey) (Figure 1).It is one of the most important and old high plateau of Osmaniye and Çukurova region at the northern slopes of the Amanos mountains.Its population reaches almost to 60.000 people during summer.Average altitude is about 1.550 meters.The Zorkun high plateau is of significant research interest because of different ecosystem types in both forests and agricultural lands.The highest point of the plaeau is Keldaz hill (2108 m).The vegetation of Zorkun plateau is very rich; Pinus brutia and maquis are mixed with up to 600 meters.Pinus brutia forests are dominant between 600-900 meters.Between 900-1100 meters mixed populations of Pinus nigra and Pinus brutia are visible, together with Carpinus orientalis, Buxus sempervirens along stream sides.After 1300 meters Quercus infectoria takes the place of P. brutia together with Pinus nigra.Between the altitudes of 1400-1800 meters, Pinus nigra is the most dominated tree in the region.Fagus orientalis, is distributed among P. nigra above 1800 meters.Some pure Abies cilicica populations also exist between 1900-2000 meters (Sevgi, 1984;Gürçınar and Yüceer, 1995).
The work aims to make a contribution to the myxobiota of Turkey.

Materials and Method
Natural substrates and debris material, like bark of living trees, as well as decaying bark, wood, leaves and litter were collected from four different stations in Zorkun Hihgh Plateau.Natural mature fructifications were directly collected from the substratum and placed in cardboard herbarium boxes.Fructifications of some myxomycetes were obtained from the moist chamber culture in the laboratory.Collected plants materials were moistened with distilled water.The moist chambers were examined every day under a stereo-microscope.When fructification of myxomycetes were detected in the culture, the moist chamber was allowed to dry slowly and the myxomycetes were then dried for one week and prepared as fungarium material.
Microscopic and macroscopic features of the samples were determined in the laboratory.The morphological characters; fruiting bodies shape, size and colour, spore size and ornamentation, capillitium colour and branching, lime crystalsize and morphology, stalk colour and proportion were measured.The specimens were identified according to the relevant references (Martin and Alexopoulos, 1969;Neubert et al., 1993Neubert et al., , 1995Neubert et al., and 2000)).The samples are stored in fungarium of biology department.

Results
In this study 28 species (65 samples) belonging to 6 orders, 9 families and 16 genera were identified.Twenty three samples (7 species) were collected in field, 42 samples (16 species) were developed in moist chamber culture and 5 species were both collected from nature and obtained by moist chamber culture in laboratory.
Abundance indices were applied to all species collected from research area.These indices are categorised as Rare (for species < 0.5% of total number collections), Occasional (for species > 0.5% but < 1.5% of total), Common (for species > 1.5% but < 3.0% of total), and Abundant (for species > 3.0% of total) (Stephenson et al., 1993).In our study, 6 species were found to be abundant (A), 10 species were common (C), 12 species were occasional (O).The mean number of species per genus (S/G) was calculated from the data sets of study area as 1.75.

Discussions
Our research is the first study on myxomycetes of Osmaniye.Totaly 28 species were determined for Osmaniye myxobiota.Echinostelium minutum, Cribraria cancellata, Didymium difforme, Didymium squamulosum, Physarum album, and Arcyria cinerea are the most common species (Abundant) in research area, and they comprised the 50.7% of all the samples.Many studies have also reported that the above-mentioned species are cosmopolitan on different substrates (Alexopoulos et al., 1996;Ergül and Akgül, 2011;Stephenson, 2014;Baba et al., 2016).The most common genera to be determined in the region was Arcyria.Then comes Comatricha, Didymium, Echinostelium and Physarum.Comprising 5 genera and 7 species, Stemonitidaceae was the largest family (25%) in the region.
The myxomycete samples are generally determined on dead and decaying coniferous wood, bark, leaves and debris materials (Ing and Haynes, 1999;Ergül et al., 2005;Ko et al., 2010;Baba and Özyiğit, 2017).The majority of the samples were also collected from similar substrates and in our study.In research area the percentage of lignicolous myxomycetes is 34%, corticolous myxomycetes is 40%, foliicolous myxomycetes is 23%.
The mean number of species per genus (S/G) is 1.75 in our area.As Simberloff (1970) and others have pointed out, a low value for S/G implies a higher overall diversity.According to Stephenson et al. (1993) this rate in Southern India is 2.24 and 4.13in North America.Alexopoulos (1970) reported that species diversity of myxomycetes is lower in tropical forests than temperate forests (Tee et al., 2014).
With this study, 28 myxomycete species were determined from Zorkun High Plateau, and a considerable contribution was made to the myxobiota of Osmaniye province and Turkey.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map of Osmaniye and Zorkun high plateau