Dominant Tree Species and Soil Type Affect the Fungal Community Structure in a Boreal Peatland Forest

Abstract

f Boreal peatlands play a crucial role in global carbon cycling, acting as an important carbon reservoir. However, little information is available on how peatland microbial communities are influenced by natural variability or human-induced disturbances. In this study, we have investigated the fungal diversity and community structure of both the organic soil layer and buried wood in boreal forest soils using high-throughput sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. We have also compared the fungal communities during the primary colonization of wood with those of the surrounding soils. A permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) confirmed that the community composition significantly differed between soil types (P < 0.001) and tree species (P < 0.001). The distance-based linear models analysis showed that environmental variables were significantly correlated with community structure (P < 0.04). The availability of soil nutrients (Ca [P ‫؍‬ 0.002], Fe [P ‫؍‬ 0.003], and P [P ‫؍‬ 0.003]) within the site was an important factor in the fungal community composition. The species richness in wood was significantly lower than in the corresponding soil (P < 0.004). The results of the molecular identification were supplemented by fruiting body surveys. Seven of the genera of Agaricomycotina identified in our surveys were among the top 20 genera observed in pyrosequencing data. Our study is the first, to our knowledge, fungal high-throughput next-generation sequencing study performed on peatlands; it further provides a baseline for the investigation of the dynamics of the fungal community in the boreal peatlands.

Soil microbial communities associated with giant sequoia: How does the world's largest tree affect some of the world's smallest organisms?

“…Overall, these findings-which agree with a number of other studies where bulk soil microbial communities differed between contrasting tree species (Ayres et al, 2009;Scheibe et al, 2015;Sun et al, 2016;Thoms et al, 2010)-suggest that a "host signal" can still be observed despite relatively large differences by grove.…”

Peer Review #3 of "Different revegetation types alter soil physical-chemical characteristics and fungal community in the Baishilazi Nature Reserve (v0.1)"

“…In addition, total C, total N, available N, and available P were also closely linked to the fungal community composition (Fig. 9, Table 5), which was consistent with other researches (Sun et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2017). Basidiomycota are generally sensitive to physic-chemical characteristic disturbance (Osono, 2007).…”

Soil microbial communities associated with giant sequoia: How does the world’s largest tree affect some of the world’s smallest organisms?

“…Fungal community composition also differed between giant sequoia and sugar pine; 448 however, the specific ways that fungi differed between tree species depended on the 449 grove ( Figure 1B). Overall, these findings-which agree with a number of other studies 450 where bulk soil microbial communities differed between contrasting tree species (Ayres 451 et al, 2009;Thoms et al, 2010;Scheibe et al, 2015;Sun et al, 2016)-suggest that, 452 despite relatively large grove differences, a "host signal" can still be observed. 453…”