Overall, 54 species and 2245 records of myxomycetes were recorded, with an average of 14.5 species (range between 6-24) and 78.4 records (range between 20-110) detected each month. Also, the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), provided by NOAA, an estimate of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), was evaluated in the analyses. Biological data were analyzed using three recorded climatic variables obtained in situ during the complete period of study. Based on monthly visits and a standard sampling effort of 120 minutes per visit, myxomycetes were recorded on leaves, twigs, and logs on the ground by two to three people in 20-minute periods associated with six different collecting sites within a 34-hectare successional forest patch. The present study summarizes the integrated floristic and bioclimatic components of a 30-month assessment of myxomycete sporocarps in a premontane tropical forest in Turrialba, Costa Rica. Myxomycetes have life cycle characteristics that allow both to be documented. Long-term monitoring and phenological patterns of microbial communities are rare in the scientific literature. The approaches, techniques, and their potential limitations are discussed herein, along with recent advances (e.g., moist chamber cultures, environmental PCR, metagenomics, and barcoding attempts) that have been applied to studies of myxomycete ecology and will undoubtedly increase our understanding of myxomycete communities in the future. Therefore it appears unlikely that a single method will be universally applicable for assessing myxomycete diversity in all habitats and on all substrates. It is important to note that most of the available data are based on collections of fruiting bodies, which probably represent (in a literal sense) only the tip of the iceberg, since it is possible that these reflect only a minor fraction of the real diversity of myxomycetes in a particular habitat. In this chapter, the results obtained from recent studies of myxomycete ecology are discussed, with special emphasis on their distribution patterns in particular habitats, the relationships that exist between myxomycetes and other organisms, and the effect of disturbance events on myxomycete communities. sphaerosperma along with results from a multivariate CDA analysis seem to indicate that these two species are more specialized than C.

Moreover the niche overlap value between C.

fruticulosa shows the broadest niche of the three species. As expected in theory the cosmopolitan C. The results from in situ measurements of environmental factors associated with their fructifications reveal a clear separation of niches between the two tropical species, which might be an indication of resource partitioning within the genus. As part of several investigations carried out in the neotropics the ecology of the three macroscopic species of Ceratiomyxa was studied. However ecological data documenting niche separation in eumycetozoans are largely lacking. In theory these two tropical species might be expected to display more narrow niches than their cosmopolitan counterpart due to their specialization for tropical environments.

The eumycetozoan genus Ceratiomyxa appears to have a cosmopolitan distribution, although two of the three macroscopic species within the genus have been reported only from tropical regions of the world.

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