The diversity of coprophilous fungi from Dahuadian and Zhongdian grasslands, Yunnan, China

The coprophilous fungi on cattle dung (Bos taurus) were investigated at Dahuadian and Zhongdian grasslands, in Yunnan Province, China. Fifty dung samples from Dahuadian and 50 from Zhongdian were collected and examined for fungi. A total of 61 species were recorded in this study (47 species from Dahuadian and 27 from Zhongdian) including 15 new records for mainland China. Species occurrence, species frequency, species richness, Shannon-Weiner index (H'), species evenness (E) and Sørensen's index of similarity (S') from the two grasslands were calculated. The fungal diversity from Dahuadian (altitude: 2940 meters) was higher than that from Zhongdian (altitude: 3300 meters). The proportion of ascomycetes (70%) to basidiomycetes (19%) from Zhongdian was much larger than the proportion of ascomycetes (54%) to basidiomycetes (15%) from Dahuadian. The reason for differences in fungal communities are discussed.