Micromycetes in podzolic and bog-podzolic soils in the middle taiga subzone of northeastern European Russia

Abstract

The qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the mycobiota in podzolic and bog-podzolic soils were studied in the middle taiga subzone (the Republic of Komi). The complex of micromycetes was found to include 73 species of 18 genera from the Zygomycota and Ascomycota orders and from the formal class of anamorphic fungi. The latter has the following specific features: many forms of sterile mycelium, the predominance of Penicillium species (25), the constant presence of Mucor and Trichoderma species, and single Aspergillus species. With increasing moisture in the sequence of the podzolic, surface-gleyic podzolic, peaty podzolic-gleyic, and peat podzolic-gley soils, the dominant soil fungi are preserved, but the species composition of the micromycete complexes becomes poorer due to the removal of rare species. In the podzolic and bog-podzolic soils, fungi absolutely predominate in the microbial biomass. They accounted for more than 99% of the total biomass, 1–6% of the latter is the biomass of spores, and more than 94% falls on mycelium. In these soils, the reserves of bacterial biomass, as compared to those of fungi, are lower by two orders of magnitude.