Abstract
Periglacial substrates exposed by retreating glaciers represent extreme and sensitive environments defined by a variety of abiotic stressors that challenge organismal establishment and survival. The simple communities often residing at these sites enable their analyses in depth. We utilized existing data and mined published sporocarp, morphotyped ectomycorrhizae (ECM), as well as environmental sequence data of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) regions of the ribosomal RNA gene to identify taxa that occur at a glacier forefront in the North Cascades Mountains in Washington State in the USA. The discrete data types consistently identified several common and widely distributed genera, perhaps best exemplified by Inocybe and Laccaria. Although we expected low diversity and richness, our environmental sequence data included 37 ITS and 26 LSU operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that likely form ECM. While environmental surveys of metabarcode markers detected large numbers of targeted ECM taxa, both the fruiting body and the morphotype datasets included genera that were undetected in either of the metabarcode datasets. These included hypogeous (Hymenogaster) and epigeous (Lactarius) taxa, some of which may produce large sporocarps but may possess small and/or spatially patchy genets. We highlight the importance of combining various data types to provide a comprehensive view of a fungal community, even in an environment assumed to host communities of low species richness and diversity.
Highlights
Many alpine glaciers have been retreating [1,2] since reaching a maximum during the Little Ice Age in the mid-1800s [3]
Our previously reported sporocarp collections represented 13 species distributed across seven genera, sampled over the span of 17 collecting expeditions between 1988 and 1999 [26]
Hymenogaster glacialis is hypogeous, i.e., truffle-like, fruiting belowground with spores dispersed by animal mycophagy [29]
Summary
Many alpine glaciers have been retreating [1,2] since reaching a maximum during the Little Ice Age in the mid-1800s [3]. The exposed deglaciated sites are burdened by extreme daily temperature oscillations combined with high irradiation, exposure to potentially damaging winds, and poor water retention [5,6]. These abiotic stressors challenge organismal establishment and survival in glacier foreland sites. Such sites provide unique opportunities to explore community ecology in a setting that permits establishment of simple communities defined by low species richness [7,8]. Jumpponen and Egerton-Warburton [9]
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