Warming water and leaf litter quality but not plant origin drive decomposition and fungal diversity in an experiment.

Abstract

The fungi associated with leaf litter play a key role in decomposition and can be affected both by the warming water and the invasion of non-native species in riparian vegetation. Warming water and invasion of non-native riparian species on stream fungal communities have been studied mainly in temperate ecosystems. We tested the effects of warming water and non-native plant Psidium guajava on leaf litter decomposition, conidia density, species richness and beta diversity of tropical stream fungi. Thus, we carried out an experiment using the current mean temperature of streams from northwestern Paraná in South Brazil (22°C) and two temperatures above the current mean temperature (26°C and 29°C). We also used the leaves of a non-native plant (P.guajava), and two native plants (one of similar nutritional quality, and the other of higher nutritional quality than the non-native species) occurring in Neotropical streams riparian vegetation. Warming water accelerated leaf litter decomposition and reduced conidia density and fungal richness in native and non-native plants. However, species composition and beta diversity were not affected by water temperature. Our study showed that warming affects the fungi of streams, the main microorganisms responsible for decomposition and that the nutritional quality of the leaves may be more important than the origin of riparian plant species. Despite this, further investigations should be conducted on the interaction of P.guajava with the flow of nutrients in these environments and how it can affect other ecosystem processes and the food chain. Efforts to study the effects of water warming and biological invasion on the attributes and distribution of fungi in streams are vital, making them a tool for the conservation of riparian ecosystems.