Abstract
Though bacteria and fungi are common inhabitants of decaying wood, little is known about the relationship between bacterial and fungal community dynamics during natural wood decay. Based on previous studies involving inoculated wood blocks, strong fungal selection on bacteria abundance and community composition was expected to occur during natural wood decay. Here, we focused on bacterial and fungal community compositions in pine wood samples collected from dead trees in different stages of decomposition. We showed that bacterial communities undergo less drastic changes than fungal communities during wood decay. Furthermore, we found that bacterial community assembly was a stochastic process at initial stage of wood decay and became more deterministic in later stages, likely due to environmental factors. Moreover, composition of bacterial communities did not respond to the changes in the major fungal species present in the wood but rather to the stage of decay reflected by the wood density. We concluded that the shifts in the bacterial communities were a result of the changes in wood properties during decomposition and largely independent of the composition of the wood-decaying fungal communities.
Highlights
Degradation of plant remains is important in carbon and nutrient cycling in soil (Chambers et al, 2000; Brown, 2002; Weedon et al, 2009; van Geffen et al, 2010)
To gain insight in the importance of bacteria for fungal wood decay, we focused our study on bacterial community composition in relation to changes in fungal community composition during successive stages of natural decay of pine wood
To test whether neutral or niche-based mechanisms best explained the assembly of the microbial community, we examined the species rank abundance distribution for each wood sample category defined by multivariate regression tree (MRT) analysis
Summary
Degradation of plant remains is important in carbon and nutrient cycling in soil (Chambers et al, 2000; Brown, 2002; Weedon et al, 2009; van Geffen et al, 2010). Several studies have addressed the occurrence of bacteria in decaying wood and indicated that interactions between fungi and bacteria may be important for the decay processes (de Boer and van der Wal, 2008; Valášková et al, 2009). Wood-decay fungi can be classified according to the type of decay that they cause namely white- or brown-rot. The degradation of wood polymers by fungi is a complex process involving enzymes, mediators, and acidic conditions. Reactive oxygen species that are generated by fungal peroxidases and phenol oxidases have an important role in the degradation of lignin and cellulose. All together, these processes create a harsh environment for bacterial colonization
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