Abundance of fungi and their species diversity in soil of seven deciduous forests situated at a distance of 0.7, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 15 km from a chemical factory in Lithuania were investigated. Fungal abundance and species composition were determined by the colony count technique and identifi cation by macro-and micro-morphological observations of fungal cultures aft er subculture on potato dextrose agar, malt extract agar, cornmeal agar, Czapek's agar and Sabouroud agar media. Th e number of fungi viable on the isolation media negatively correlated (r =-0.58) with the distance from the pollution source and with the content of some heavy metals in soil (r =-0.46,-0.44 and-0.35, As, Cr and Zn, respectively). A positive correlation between fungal abundance and the content of nutrients, organic mater and water in soil (r = 0.77, 0.88, 0.74 and 0.46, for N, P, OMC and WC, respectively) was observed. In contrast to the abundance, the number of isolated fungal genera (and species) positively correlated with the distance from the factory and heavy metal content in soil. A lower fungus diversity in more polluted soils provided evidence that pollution may reduce the suitability of forest soil as a habitat for specifi c groups of fungi, such as the genera Geomyces and Acremonium and some species of the Penicillium and Trichoderma genera. Other fungi (Paecilomyces, Talaromyces, Beauveria genera and sterile mycelia forms) were abundant in the soil of more polluted forest plots.
The effect of copper and zinc on cultivable soil fungi populations was investigated in a laboratory experiment. Samples of four different soils (arable sandy soil and loam clay; forest sandy soil and forest peat) were collected from sites located in Vilnius district, Lithuania. Metals' effect was elaborated by addition of metal salts (CuSO 4 and ZnSO 4 ) at appropriate concentrations into the growth medium (Czapek's agar) and evaluating culmedium (Czapek's agar) and evaluating cultivable fungi abundance and species diversity changes. Zinc or copper salt was added to the medium after its sterilization; zinc concentration varied from 0.05 to 0.20 M (by 0.05 M concentration range) and copper concentration -from 0.5 to 3.0 mM (by 0.15 mM concentration range). At elevated metal salt concentrations, the abundance of cultivable fungi decreased with a marked elimination of some fungi species as compared with a control medium (without metal addition) fungi cultures. Irrespective of a fungi community structure in different type soils, Cu was a stronger inhibitor of soil fungi population abundance than Zn, however, both metals showed a comparable effect on the fungi species diversity. The most resistant fungi belonged to common insect pathogens (Beuveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, Lecanicillium lecanii and Isaria spp.), which dominated comprising up to 90% of all recovered from the soils isolates, due to the metal salt concentration.
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