Old trees are rare in the landscape, as are many of their associated species. Veteranisation is a method by which attempts are made to create microhabitats, otherwise found only in old trees, in younger trees at an earlier stage than would occur naturally. Here, we analysed the early fungal succession in 6 y-old veteranisation wounds in ca. 100 y old living oak trunks by DNA-barcoding of the wood at eight sites in Sweden and Norway. We hypothesised basidiomycetes would be most abundant, and exposed sapwood and heartwood would select for different communities. We identified 686 fungal taxa, mainly ascomycetes, with a large overlap in species composition and surprisingly similar species richness, i.e. 325 vs. 308–360, between intact and different types of damaged wood, respectively. Endophytes continued to be present and common in damaged wood. The results demonstrate that damage to sapwood and heartwood partly select for different fungi and that 6 y is too early to evaluate if veteranisation can positively favour fungi of conservation interest.

老树和许多相关树种在景观中都很稀有。退伍军人化是一种尝试创建微生境的方法，否则该生境只能在老树中，在较自然发生的较早阶段出现在较年轻的树中。在这里，我们分析了约6年大的6月龄兽医化伤口的早期真菌演替。在瑞典和挪威的八个地点，通过DNA条形码对100 y古老的活橡木树干进行了编码。我们假设担子菌最多，而裸露的边材和心材会选择不同的群落。我们确定了686个真菌类群，主要是子囊类，在完整和不同类型的受损木材之间，物种组成存在很大的重叠，并且物种丰富度出乎意料地相似，即325对308–360。内生真菌继续存在于受损的木材中并普遍存在。