Trametes elegans,[1] also known as Lenzites elegans and Daedalea elegans, is a common polypore and wood-decay fungus with a pantropical distribution found on hardwood hosts in regions including Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.[2][3] It has recently been suggested to be a complex of three different species: T. elegans,T. aesculi, and T. repanda.[4]
The basidiocarp of T. elegans is brown with narrow semi-dadeloid pores.[5] The pore surface is yellow, with a dark line separating the lower context and the upper tomentum.[6] Defining characteristics of T. elegans include skeletal hyphae, thin-walled basidiospores, and a poroid hymenophore.[5]T. elegans has no stipe and has a corky texture. It is circular, sessile, and flabelliform in shape. It is flexible when fresh and becomes more rigid as it dries.[7] The fruiting body of T. elegans is leathery and grows alone on dead wood. It is off-white, velvety, and has aerial hyphae in secondary mycelial culture.[8]
Ecology
T. elegans shares a commensalistic relationship with various host plants where it provides protection to the plant against assault from other pathogens. Additionally, T. elegans is endophytic.[5] As T. elegans belongs to the white rot fungi group, they are important in breaking down lignin from trees and they do so extracellularly, non-specifically, and non-hydrolytically. This is important for recycling carbon in forest ecosystems.[9]
Habitat
T. elegans prefers an intermediate temperature range of around 25-35 °C and can grow in both the soil and on synthetic media.[10] Additionally, they prefer to inhabit rotting wood and leaf litter in tropical forests.[5] They prefer hardwood forests.[5]
Geographical distribution
Trametes elegans is most common in tropical hardwood forests. Places where it occurs include West Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the southern United States.
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