scholarly journals Soil Fungal Community Composition Correlates with Site-Specific Abiotic Factors, Tree Community Structure, and Forest Age in Regenerating Tropical Rainforests

Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1120
Author(s):  
Irene Adamo ◽  
Edgar Ortiz-Malavasi ◽  
Robin Chazdon ◽  
Priscila Chaverri ◽  
Hans ter Steege ◽  
...  

Successional dynamics of plants and animals during tropical forest regeneration have been thoroughly studied, while fungal compositional dynamics during tropical forest succession remain unknown, despite the crucial roles of fungi in ecological processes. We combined tree data and soil fungal DNA metabarcoding data to compare richness and community composition along secondary forest succession in Costa Rica and assessed the potential roles of abiotic factors influencing them. We found a strong coupling of tree and soil fungal community structure in wet tropical primary and regenerating secondary forests. Forest age, edaphic variables, and regional differences in climatic conditions all had significant effects on tree and fungal richness and community composition in all functional groups. Furthermore, we observed larger site-to-site compositional differences and greater influence of edaphic and climatic factors in secondary than in primary forests. The results suggest greater environmental heterogeneity and greater stochasticity in community assembly in the early stages of secondary forest succession and a certain convergence on a set of taxa with a competitive advantage in the more persisting environmental conditions in old-growth forests. Our work provides unprecedented insights into the successional dynamics of fungal communities during secondary tropical forest succession.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinhong He ◽  
Shuo Jiao ◽  
Xiangping Tan ◽  
Hui Wei ◽  
Xiaomin Ma ◽  
...  

Soil fungi play critical roles in ecosystem processes and are sensitive to global changes. Elevated atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has been well documented to impact on fungal diversity and community composition, but how the fungal community assembly responds to the duration effects of experimental N addition remains poorly understood. Here, we aimed to investigate the soil fungal community variations and assembly processes under short- (2 years) versus long-term (13 years) exogenous N addition (∼100 kg N ha–1 yr–1) in a N-rich tropical forest of China. We observed that short-term N addition significantly increased fungal taxonomic and phylogenetic α-diversity and shifted fungal community composition with significant increases in the relative abundance of Ascomycota and decreases in that of Basidiomycota. Short-term N addition also significantly increased the relative abundance of saprotrophic fungi and decreased that of ectomycorrhizal fungi. However, unremarkable effects on these indices were found under long-term N addition. The variations of fungal α-diversity, community composition, and the relative abundance of major phyla, genera, and functional guilds were mainly correlated with soil pH and NO3––N concentration, and these correlations were much stronger under short-term than long-term N addition. The results of null, neutral community models and the normalized stochasticity ratio (NST) index consistently revealed that stochastic processes played predominant roles in the assembly of soil fungal community in the tropical forest, and the relative contribution of stochastic processes was significantly increased by short-term N addition. These findings highlighted that the responses of fungal community to N addition were duration-dependent, i.e., fungal community structure and assembly would be sensitive to short-term N addition but become adaptive to long-term N enrichment.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengmeng Zhang ◽  
Ning Wang ◽  
Jingyun Zhang ◽  
Yanbo Hu ◽  
Dunjiang Cai ◽  
...  

A better understanding of soil fungal communities is very useful in revealing the effects of an agroforestry system and would also help us to understand the fungi-mediated effects of agricultural practices on the processes of soil nutrient cycling and crop productivity. Compared to conventional monoculture farming, agroforestry systems have obvious advantages in improving land use efficiency and maintaining soil physicochemical properties, reducing losses of water, soil material, organic matter, and nutrients, as well as ensuring the stability of yields. In this study, we attempted to investigate the impact of a mulberry/alfalfa intercropping system on the soil physicochemical properties and the rhizosphere fungal characteristics (such as the diversity and structure of the fungal community), and to analyze possible correlations among the planting pattern, the soil physicochemical factors, and the fungal community structure. In the intercropping and monoculture systems, we determined the soil physicochemical properties using chemical analysis and the fungal community structure with MiSeq sequencing of the fungal ITS1 region. The results showed that intercropping significantly improved the soil physicochemical properties of alfalfa (total nitrogen, alkaline hydrolysable nitrogen, available potassium, and total carbon contents). Sequencing results showed that the dominant taxonomic groups were Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Mucoromycota. Intercropping increased the fungal richness of mulberry and alfalfa rhizosphere soils and improved the fungal diversity of mulberry. The diversity and structure of the fungal community were predominantly influenced by both the planting pattern and soil environmental factors (total nitrogen, total phosphate, and total carbon). Variance partitioning analysis showed that the planting pattern explained 25.9% of the variation of the fungal community structure, and soil environmental factors explained 63.1% of the variation. Planting patterns and soil physicochemical properties conjointly resulted in changes of the soil fungal community structure in proportion.


1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 1481-1490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Palik ◽  
Kurt S. Pregitzer

We reconstructed the height-growth histories of individual Quercusrubra L., Fraxinusamericana L., and Acerrubrum L. growing in a 42-year-old Populusgrandidentata Michx. – Populustremuloides Michx. dominated forest. Species established contemporaneously early in the sere, but temporally separated periods of peak individual establishment occurred among species, such that the majority of Q. rubra established prior to the majority of F. americana and A. rubrum. Species vertical stratification by age 42 paralleled establishment patterns. Height-growth rates were similar among species and between different-aged individuals within species. This suggests that species vertical stratification 42 years after stand initiation was primarily a function of differences in species establishment patterns.


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