J. Bio. & Env. Sci. 2015 65 | Farooq et al. RESEARCH PAPER OPEN ACCESS Variations in aerial mycobiota of archeological sites of Taxila, Pakistan Muhammad Farooq 1* , Mukhtiar Hassan 1 , Farzana Gul 1 , Sohail 2 , Inayat Ur Rahman 2 , Muhammad Afzal 2 , Noor Saeed Khattak 2 , Faisal Nouroz 3 , Zafar Iqbal 2 1 Department of Biochemistry, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan 2 Department of Botany, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan 3 Department of Bioinformatics, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan Article published on March 02, 2015 Key words: Mycobiota, Biodeterioration, Archaeological sites, Aspergillus, Alternaria. Abstract The transportation of air borne fungal spores to the surface of archeological monuments is very significant step in the process of biodeterioration. The present study was designed to isolate the aerial mycobiota from six world heritage sites of Taxila. The fungal spores were trapped by petri plate gravitational method and three culture media malt extract agar, potato dextrose agar and czapek dox agar were used. A total of 30 fungal species belonging to 19 different genera were recorded through out the year. The quantitative analysis of data revealed that Alternaria alternata with 9.79% of total colonies was the dominant species in the air of selected sites followed by Aspergillus niger (9.10%), Cladosporium herbarum (8.02%), Penicillium chrysogenum (7.53%), Fusarium oxysporum (6.94%), Aspergillus flavus (6.73%), Aspergillus fumigatus (6.0%), Penicillium frequentans (4.68%), Cladosporium cladosporioides (3.85%), Alternaria solani (3.78%), Mucor mucedo (3.50%) and Helminthosporium solani (3.40%). The qualitative analysis of isolated fungal species clearly indicated a well marked variation in the composition of aerial mycobiota of selected sites as some fungal species were restricted to particular archaeological sites. The present investigation is first study of aerial mycobiota of world fame archaeological sites of Taxila. * Corresponding Author: Muhammad Farooq  farhum37@gmail.com Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences (JBES) ISSN: 2220-6663 (Print) 2222-3045 (Online) Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 65-72, 2015 http://www.innspub.net