Abstract
Fungi release spores into the global atmosphere. The emitted spores are deposited to the surface of the Earth by sedimentation (dry deposition) and precipitation (wet deposition), and therefore contribute to the global cycling of substances. However, knowledge is scarce regarding the diversities of fungi deposited from the atmosphere. Here, an automatic dry and wet deposition sampler and high-throughput sequencing plus quantitative PCR were used to observe taxonomic diversities and flux densities of atmospheric fungal deposition. Taxon-specific fungal deposition velocities and aerodynamic diameters (da) were determined using a collocated cascade impactor for volumetric, particle-size-resolved air sampling. Large multicellular spore-producing dothideomycetes (da ≥ 10.0 μm) were predominant in dry deposition, with a mean velocity of 0.80 cm s–1 for all fungal taxa combined. Higher taxonomic richness was observed in fungal assemblages in wet deposition than in dry deposition, suggesting the presence of fungal taxa that are deposited only in wet form. In wet deposition, agaricomycetes, including mushroom-forming fungi, and sordariomycetes, including plant pathogenic species, were enriched, indicating that such fungal spores serve as nuclei in clouds, and/or are discharged preferentially during precipitation. Moreover, this study confirmed that fungal assemblage memberships and structures were significantly different between dry and wet deposition (P-test, p < 0.001). Overall, these findings suggest taxon-specific involvement of fungi in precipitation, and provide important insights into potential links between environmental changes that can disturb regional microbial communities (e.g., deforestation) and changes in precipitation patterns that might be mediated by changes in microbial communities in the atmosphere.
Highlights
The kingdom Fungi contains several million estimated species of molds, yeasts, mushrooms, and other life forms [1, 2]
More than 99% of the sequences from air samples were found to represent the Ascomycota and the Basidiomycota, with the relative abundance of Ascomycota increasing with increasing aerodynamic diameter, i.e., 48, 47, 67, 87, and 89% for da = 2.1–3.3, 3.3–4.7, 4.7–7.0, 7.0–11, and >11 μm, respectively
Genera were shown if they were detected in all sampled months and each month had more than four sequence reads from the samples of all particle size intervals combined
Summary
The kingdom Fungi contains several million estimated species of molds, yeasts, mushrooms, and other life forms [1, 2]. Particle size is expected to affect flux densities of fungal deposition from the atmosphere. Aerodynamic diameter (da) is a commonly used size measure for airborne particles. This is defined as the diameter of a sphere that has a density of 1 g cm–3 with the same settling velocity as the velocity of a particle of interest. Aerodynamic diameters of atmospheric fungi are taxon-dependent [15, 16], and taxon-dependent dry deposition velocities of atmospheric fungi are expected, with larger velocities for large multicellular sporeproducing dothideomycetes, for example. Literature reported that large pollen grains served as effective CCN in the atmosphere [19]
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