Abstract

The composition and structure of plant-root-associated fungal communities are determined by local abiotic and biotic conditions. However, the relative influence and identity of relationships to abiotic and biotic factors may differ across environmental and ecological contexts, and fungal functional groups. Thus, understanding which aspects of root-associated fungal community ecology generalise across contexts is the first step towards a more predictive framework. We investigated how the relative importance of biotic and abiotic factors scale across environmental and ecological contexts using high-throughput sequencing (ca. 55 M Illumina metabarcoding sequences) of >260 plant-root-associated fungal communities from six UK salt marshes across two geographic regions (South-East and North-West England) in winter and summer. Levels of root-associated fungal diversity were comparable with forests and temperate grasslands, quadrupling previous estimates of salt-marsh fungal diversity. Whilst abiotic variables were generally most important, a range of site- and spatial scale-specific abiotic and biotic drivers of diversity and community composition were observed. Consequently, predictive models of diversity trained on one site, extrapolated poorly to others. Fungal taxa from the same functional groups responded similarly to the specific drivers of diversity and composition. Thus site, spatial scale and functional group are key factors that, if accounted for, may lead to a more predictive understanding of fungal community ecology.

Highlights

  • Most OTUs were assigned to a phylum, whilst ~25% were identified to species level (Fig. S1)

  • By carrying out a spatially replicated study, we found that abiotic variables were generally superior predictors of community structure and diversity across sites and spatial scales

  • The identity and direction of relationships differed between sites and spatial scales to such an extent that extrapolating them to other sites generally resulted in poor predictions of fungal diversity

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Summary

Objectives

The primary aim of our study was not to identify the main drivers of fungal community structure per se, but rather to test their consistency between different sites and spatial scales, in which case our consistent sampling design and measurements of environmental variables are sufficient

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