Applications of self‐organizing map for patterning macrofungal diversity of xerothermic swards

Macrofungal communities were investigated in four associations of xerothermic swards: Festucetum pallentis , Origano ‐ Brachypodietum , Adonido ‐ Brachypodietum pinnati and Diantho ‐ Armerietum elongatae in a Jurassic area of the Częstochowa Upland (southern Poland). A total of 47 species were recorded. The self‐organising map (SOM)—an unsupervised algorithm for artificial neural networks—was used to recognise patterns in the macrofungal communities of diverse xerothermic swards. Only two associations were mycologically similar: Origano ‐ Brachypodietum and Adonido ‐ Brachypodietum pinnati . Species with high and significant IndVal (the species indicator value) for each investigated phytocoenoses are presented. The presence of macrofungal species and the participation of indicator species were connected with habitat factors of plant associations, as documented by the IndVal application. In the least fertile phytocoenoses, macrofungal communities were poor with few indicator species. The more fertile phytocoenoses had richer and more varied communities of macrofungi with higher numbers of indicator species. The ordering methods applied in this study were very effective for analyzing the macrofungal communities existing in plant associations.