Abstract
Fungal diversity and community composition are mainly related to soil and vegetation factors. However, the relative contribution of the different drivers remains largely unexplored, especially in subtropical forest ecosystems. We studied the fungal diversity and community composition of soils sampled from 12 comparative study plots representing three forest age classes (Young: 10–40 yrs; Medium: 40–80 yrs; Old: ≥80 yrs) in Gutianshan National Nature Reserve in South-eastern China. Soil fungal communities were assessed employing ITS rDNA pyrotag sequencing. Members of Basidiomycota and Ascomycota dominated the fungal community, with 22 putative ectomycorrhizal fungal families, where Russulaceae and Thelephoraceae were the most abundant taxa. Analysis of similarity showed that the fungal community composition significantly differed among the three forest age classes. Forest age class, elevation of the study plots, and soil organic carbon (SOC) were the most important factors shaping the fungal community composition. We found a significant correlation between plant and fungal communities at different taxonomic and functional group levels, including a strong relationship between ectomycorrhizal fungal and non-ectomycorrhizal plant communities. Our results suggest that in subtropical forests, plant species community composition is the main driver of the soil fungal diversity and community composition.
Highlights
Fungi are a highly diverse component of soil microbial communities
A total of 16,534 fungal ITS pyrotag reads with an average length of 450 bp were obtained from the 12 soil samples collected across the three forest age classes
After multiple levels of sequence processing, quality filtering, and sequence number normalization followed by a 3% dissimilarity clustering we found 1027 fungal operational taxonomic units (OTU) including 457 (44%) singletons from 10,464 fungal ITS reads (Table S1)
Summary
Fungi are a highly diverse component of soil microbial communities. They play essential roles in many aspects of ecosystem development, functioning and stability [1]. Soil fungi influence the species composition and dynamics of plant communities [2,3]; as saprotrophs, they are an essential component of the soil food web influencing nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration [4]. Most investigations on fungal diversity and distribution have been accomplished in temperate, tropical and boreal regions There is a limited knowledge in the subtropics, subtropical forest ecosystems are among the most prominent plant diversity hotspots in the holarctic realm [9]
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