Stochastic and deterministic drivers of seasonal variation of fungal community in tobacco field soil.

Xing Li,Songrong Zeng,Jie Deng,Delong Meng,Li Shen,Huaqun Yin,Yongjun Liu,Tianming Li,Tianbo Liu

doi:10.7717/peerj.6962

Abstract

BackgroundThe soil fungal community plays an important role in global carbon cycling and shows obvious seasonal variations, however, drivers, particularly stochastic drivers, of the seasonal variation in the fungal community have never been addressed in sufficient detail.MethodsWe investigated the soil fungal community variation between summer growing (SG) and winter fallow (WF) stage, through high throughput sequencing of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) amplicons. Subsequently, we assessed the contribution of different ecological processes to community assembly using null-model-based statistical framework.ResultsThe results showed that the fungal community diversity decreased significantly after tobacco cropping in the SG stage and the composition showed a clear turnover between the WF and SG stages. The variation in community composition was largely attributable to the presence of a small portion of Dothideomycetes in the WF stage that dominated the soil fungal community in the SG stage. The organic matter, temperature, and water content were the main deterministic factors that regulated the fungal community; these factors explained 34.02% of the fungal community variation. Together with the result that the fungal community was mainly assembled by the dispersal process, our results suggested that the stochastic factors played important roles in driving the seasonal variation of fungal community. The dispersal limitation dominated the fungal community assembly during the WF stage when homogenizing dispersal was the main assembly process of the fungal community in the SG stage. Thus, we proposed that the dispersal processes are important drivers for seasonal variation of fungal community in tobacco planted soil.

Highlights

Soil fungal communities are important for qualitative and quantitative of soil organic matter (OM) (Baldrian et al, 2012; Schadt et al, 2003)
We have demonstrated that fungal community in the agriculture system is very dynamic, showing significant seasonal changes in both community diversity and composition
The shift in community composition was largely attributable to the presence of a small portion of Dothideomycetes in the winter fallow (WF) stage which dominates the fungal community in the summer cropping stage

Summary

Introduction

Soil fungal communities are important for qualitative and quantitative of soil organic matter (OM) (Baldrian et al, 2012; Schadt et al, 2003). Substantial studies have indicated that the soil microbial community showed obvious temporal variations (Goss-Souza et al, 2017; Pereira e Silva et al, 2012; Voriskova et al, 2014) They suggest that revealing the temporal dynamics of fungal community in agriculture system have important significance for understanding the belowground ecosystem, preventing plant diseases, and improving crop productions (Jiang et al, 2018; Leblanc, Kinkel & Kistler, 2015; Xu et al, 2012). Together with the result that the fungal community was mainly assembled by the dispersal process, our results suggested that the stochastic factors played important roles in driving the seasonal variation of fungal community. We proposed that the dispersal processes are important drivers for seasonal variation of fungal community in tobacco planted soil

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Discussion

Conclusion