Abstract
In this case study analysis, we identified fungal traits that were associated with the responses of taxa to 4 global change factors: elevated CO2, warming and drying, increased precipitation, and nitrogen (N) enrichment. We developed a trait-based framework predicting that as global change increases limitation of a given nutrient, fungal taxa with traits that target that nutrient will represent a larger proportion of the community (and vice versa). In addition, we expected that warming and drying and N enrichment would generate environmental stress for fungi and may select for stress tolerance traits. We tested the framework by analyzing fungal community data from previously published field manipulations and linking taxa to functional gene traits from the MycoCosm Fungal Portal. Altogether, fungal genera tended to respond similarly to 3 elements of global change: increased precipitation, N enrichment, and warming and drying. The genera that proliferated under these changes also tended to possess functional genes for stress tolerance, which suggests that these global changes—even increases in precipitation—could have caused environmental stress that selected for certain taxa. In addition, these genera did not exhibit a strong capacity for C breakdown or P acquisition, so soil C turnover may slow down or remain unchanged following shifts in fungal community composition under global change. Since we did not find strong evidence that changes in nutrient limitation select for taxa with traits that target the more limiting nutrient, we revised our trait-based framework. The new framework sorts fungal taxa into Stress Tolerating versus C and P Targeting groups, with the global change elements of increased precipitation, warming and drying, and N enrichment selecting for the stress tolerators.
Highlights
Recent decades have witnessed a discovery stage in fungal ecology, powered in part by advances in high throughput DNA sequencing (Lindahl et al, 2013; Jansson and Research, Birmensdorf, Switzerland 5 Center for Science and Math Education, San Francisco StateUniversity, San Francisco, CA, USA 6 Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, CarrollCollege, Helena, MT, USA 7 Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, SwitzerlandHofmockel, 2020)
In summary, we found that stress tolerance traits were positively related to the responses of fungal genera to 3
Capacity for C and P acquisition seemed less critical, as functional genes for these traits were less strongly linked to global change responses
Summary
Recent decades have witnessed a discovery stage in fungal ecology, powered in part by advances in high throughput DNA sequencing We have learned that fungal communities frequently shift under human-induced global change factors such as elevated CO2, warming, drought, increased precipitation, and nitrogen (N) enrichment (reviewed in Allison and Martiny, 2008; Castro et al, 2010; Pickles et al, 2012; Treseder et al, 2012; Mohan et al, 2014; Classen et al, 2015; Jansson and Hofmockel, 2020). If fungal taxa respond to global changes depending on nutrient or stress tolerance–related traits, these responses could help us identify broadly applicable mechanisms underlying community shifts. The displacement could be strong if evolutionary or physiological tradeoffs apply—if resources invested in acquiring a nonlimiting nutrient cannot be invested in acquiring the limiting nutrient (Velicer and Lenski, 1999; Allison et al, 2010b; Treseder et al, 2011; Malik et al, 2019) This framework suggests that the relative availability of nutrients selects for or against individual fungal taxa. We predicted that N enrichment and warming (if accompanied by drying) may select for taxa with stress tolerance traits, while elevated CO2 and increased precipitation may select against them (Figure 1)
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