Precipitation weakens the gravesoil fungal richness and species interactions in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

The altered precipitation regime exhibits severe ecological consequences in various soil ecosystems. However, the knowledge about gravesoil fungal community response to precipitation shifts is still limited. Here we explored the responses of gravesoil fungal community with respect to diversity, assembly, and co-occurrence network to an operable shift of precipitation by simulating no precipitation, light precipitation and moderate precipitation under 60-day corpse degradation of wild animals. The results indicated light and moderate precipitation diminished the number of gravesoil fungal OTUs by 21.21 % and 25.48 % respectively. Furthermore, precipitation significantly decreased the gravesoil fungal richness and community dissimilarity. Drift (60 %–100 %) explained a large fraction of gravesoil community assembly, and were not changed by precipitation. Moreover, the gravesoil fungal network under precipitation exhibited less connected and robust features than that in the control, hinting precipitation destabilized the gravesoil fungal networks. Our findings show precipitation may influence the structure and species interactions of gravesoil fungal community, and are conducive to predicting the gravesoil fungal composition and function under climate change.