Abstract
Fungi are important decomposers in terrestrial ecosystems, so their responses to climate change might influence carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics. We investigated whether growth and activity of fungi under drought conditions were structured by trade-offs among traits in 15 fungal isolates from a Mediterranean Southern California grassland. We inoculated fungi onto sterilized litter that was incubated at three moisture levels (4, 27, and 50% water holding capacity, WHC). For each isolate, we characterized traits that described three potential lifestyles within the newly proposed “YAS” framework: growth yield, resource acquisition, and stress tolerance. Specifically, we measured fungal hyphal length per unit litter decomposition for growth yield; the potential activities of the extracellular enzymes cellobiohydrolase (CBH), -glucosidase (BG), -xylosidase (BX), and N-acetyl---glucosaminidase (NAG) for resource acquisition; and ability to grow in drought vs. higher moisture levels for drought stress tolerance. Although, we had hypothesized that evolutionary and physiological trade-offs would elicit negative relationships among traits, we found no supporting evidence for this hypothesis. Across isolates, growth yield, drought stress tolerance, and extracellular enzyme activities were not significantly related to each other. Thus, it is possible that drought-induced shifts in fungal community composition may not necessarily lead to changes in fungal biomass or decomposer ability in this arid grassland.
Highlights
We are just beginning to understand how fungal growth and activity might shift under climate change (Todd-Brown et al, 2014; Xiao et al, 2018; Maynard et al, 2019)
We found some support for a trade-off between growth yield and the extracellular enzyme activities based on the redundancy analysis (RDA) (Supplementary Figure S5), this analysis was not significant (p = 0.561)
We investigated if fungi from a Mediterranean grassland sorted according to the YAS framework (Malik et al, 2020b), in order to improve predictions of fungal response to climate change in southern California
Summary
We are just beginning to understand how fungal growth and activity might shift under climate change (Todd-Brown et al, 2014; Xiao et al, 2018; Maynard et al, 2019). Which fungal groups will be proliferating is still unknown. This issue is important in predicting decomposition, and soil carbon (C) storage (Wieder et al, 2013). In the southwestern United States, which is experiencing major changes in precipitation patterns (Seager et al, 2007; Gibson et al, 2020), Fungal Trait Trade-Offs understanding how fungi will respond to drought is critical. One way to predict fungal response to drought stress is to investigate trade-offs among fungal traits
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