Fig. 7

Reference materials and relative reference units improve community-based measurements of performance for wood-degrading fungi. Using the same data from Fig. 6, we divided each lab’s reported extension rates for a particular organism by the lab’s reported extension rate for G. lucidum grown on media made from locally-sourced Pringles™. The resulting Relative Extension Units (REU) for each organism are within 2-fold with the exception of REU reported by Lab 4 for T. versicolor and P. chrysosporium. Reporting REUs reduced coefficients of variation for G. lucidum by 75%, for S. commune by 33%, for T. versicolor by 35%, and for P. chrysosporium by 11%. Radial extension rates for individual plates (points, n = 3), mean extension rates across all plates (bar height), and standard deviation across all plates (error bar) are shown