Abstract
The altitudinal effects on the distributions of phyllosphere fungal assemblages in conspecific plants remain poorly elucidated. To address this, phyllosphere fungal communities associated with Mussaenda shikokiana were investigated at four sites across a 350 m elevation gradient in a subtropical forest by employing Illumina metabarcoding of the fungal internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region. Our results demonstrated that phyllosphere fungal assemblages with a single host possessed high taxonomic diversity and multiple trophic guilds. OTU richness was significantly influenced by elevation. The elevation gradient also entailed distinct shifts in the community composition of phyllosphere fungi, which was significantly related to geographical distance and mean annual temperature (MAT). Additionally, comparison of phyllosphere fungal networks showed reduced connectivity with increasing elevation. Our data provide insights on the distribution and interactions of the phyllosphere fungal community associated with a single host along a short elevation gradient.
Highlights
The fungal kingdom represents one of the largest and most diverse eukaryotic lineages with estimates of around 5.1 million extant species (Blackwell, 2011; Truong et al, 2017)
The distribution pattern of species communities along altitudinal gradients is a fundamental theme of ecology and biogeography, mainly because altitudinal gradients are often characterized by different climatic conditions and complex changes in abiotic and/or biotic factors over short geographic distances (Bryant et al, 2008; Ren et al, 2018; Yao et al, 2017)
Mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation (MAP) for each site were obtained from the WorldClim global climate data set with a resolution of 30 s
Summary
The fungal kingdom represents one of the largest and most diverse eukaryotic lineages with estimates of around 5.1 million extant species (Blackwell, 2011; Truong et al, 2017). Along gradients in the Changbai mountains in China, neither the species richness nor community composition of soil fungi were significantly correlated with elevation (Shen et al, 2014). These different distribution patterns may partly be explained by difference in environmental variables, including edaphic qualities (Geml et al, 2014; Jarvis, Woodward & Taylor, 2015; Shen et al, 2014; Siles & Margesin, 2016), mean annual temperature and precipitation (Bahram et al, 2012). Most studies focused only on soil or root associated fungal assemblages, and few studies have investigated the altitudinal effects on the distribution of phyllosphere fungi (Cordier et al, 2012)
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