Abstract
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) belong to the organic pollutants that are toxic to humans and harmful to environments. Numerous studies dealing with the impact of PCBs on soil microorganisms have focused on bacterial communities. The effects of PCBs on fungal communities in three different PCB-polluted soils from former industrial sites were investigated using high-throughput sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 1 region. Significant differences in fungal alpha diversity were observed mainly due to soil physico-chemical properties. PCBs only influenced the richness of the fungal communities by increasing it. Fungal composition was rather strongly influenced by both PCBs and soil properties, resulting in different communities associated with each soil. Sixteen Ascomycota species were present in all three soils, including Stachybotrys chartarum, Fusarium oxysporum, Penicillium canescens, Penicillium chrysogenum, Penicillium citrosulfuratum and Penicillium brevicompactum, which are usually found in PCB-polluted soils, and Fusarium solani, Penicillium canescens, Penicillium citrosulfuratum and Penicillium chrysogenum, which are known PCB degraders. This study demonstrated that PCBs influence the richness and the composition of fungal communities. Their influence, associated with that of soil physico-chemical properties, led to distinct fungal communities, but with sixteen species common to the three soils which could be considered as ubiquitous species in PCB-polluted soils.
Highlights
Soil pollution is an important source of environmental challenges
The aim of this study was to investigate the fungal biodiversity in three soils from different Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)-polluted sites to determine the influence of PCBs on fungal community structure and diversity, which has not been studied so far
Rarefaction analysis performed on the data of each studied soil indicated that the taxon accumulation curves reached saturation (Supplementary Figure S1)
Summary
The presence of toxic chemical compounds in soil as a result of human industrial, agricultural and transportation activities negatively affects soil microbiota by their acute toxicity [1]. This indirectly influences a wide range of ecosystem processes, such as carbon and nitrogen cycling, organic matter decomposition, plant growth and plant diversity through nutrient availability [2,3,4]. PCBs were widely used from the 1930s to the 1970s in industries for their non-flammability and electrical resistance properties, and they had many applications, mainly in electrical equipment [8] Due to their high global production in the past
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