Fungal functional ecology: Bringing a trait-based approach to plant-associated fungi

Abstract

Fungi play many essential roles in ecosystems. They facilitate plant access to nutrients and water, serve as decay agents that cycle carbon and nutrients through the soil, water and atmosphere, and are major regulators of macro-organismal populations. Although technological advances are improving the detection and identification of fungi, there still exist key gaps in our ecological knowledge of this kingdom, especially related to function. Trait-based approaches have been instrumental in strengthening our understanding of plant functional ecology and, as such, provide excellent models for deepening our understanding of fungal functional ecology in ways that complement insights gained from traditional and -omics-based techniques. In this review, we synthesize current knowledge of fungal functional ecology, taxonomy and systematics and introduce a novel database of fungal functional traits (FunFun). FunFun is built to interface with other databases to explore and predict how fungal functional diversity varies by taxonomy, guild, and other evolutionary or ecological grouping variables. To highlight how a quantitative trait-based approach can provide new insights, we describe multiple targeted examples and end by suggesting next steps in the rapidly growing field of fungal functional ecology.

Experimental drought re‐ordered assemblages of root‐associated fungi across North American grasslands

“…We suggest that the functional role of the same fungal taxon may depend strongly on host identity as well as ecosystem type (context‐dependency), requiring much richer fungal databases than currently exist (e.g. FunGuild, FunFun; Nguyen et al., 2016; Zanne et al., 2019) in order to assign functional roles to plant‐associated fungal taxa.…”

Methods and approaches to advance soil macroecology

“…For soil bacteria and fungi, on the contrary, characterization of morphological, physiological and phenological traits can be more challenging since isolation of individual species for trait measurements is not feasible in most cases (Krause et al., 2014; Zanne, Powell et al, 2020). Two recently published, large global databases, FungalRoot (Soudzilovskaia et al, 2020) and the Fungal Functional Database (FUNfun, Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020), however, will facilitate better understanding of trait composition of fungal communities, their interactions with plants, and their effects on world‐wide ecosystem functioning (Powell & Rillig, 2018). However, as with many taxa, fungal trait databases are often incomplete (Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020).…”

“…Two recently published, large global databases, FungalRoot (Soudzilovskaia et al, 2020) and the Fungal Functional Database (FUNfun, Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020), however, will facilitate better understanding of trait composition of fungal communities, their interactions with plants, and their effects on world‐wide ecosystem functioning (Powell & Rillig, 2018). However, as with many taxa, fungal trait databases are often incomplete (Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020). There has also been a concerted effort to quantify microbial functions in soil due to their importance for key ecosystem functions (Aguilar‐Trigueros et al., 2015; Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020) through standardized ‘omics’ and enzymatic approaches (Dawson et al., 2019), as well as the measurement of climate tolerances to investigate life history trait trade‐offs at large spatial scales (Maynard et al., 2019).…”

“…However, as with many taxa, fungal trait databases are often incomplete (Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020). There has also been a concerted effort to quantify microbial functions in soil due to their importance for key ecosystem functions (Aguilar‐Trigueros et al., 2015; Zanne, Abarenkov et al., 2020) through standardized ‘omics’ and enzymatic approaches (Dawson et al., 2019), as well as the measurement of climate tolerances to investigate life history trait trade‐offs at large spatial scales (Maynard et al., 2019).…”

The Ecology Underground coalition: building a collaborative future of belowground ecology and ecologists

“…Ecology Underground identified three trait characteristics which hold promise for assessing and modeling responses of free‐living microbes to changing environments: (1) traits that can be predicted from community properties or community membership (Fig. 2; Hall et al ., 2018); (2) traits that can cause changes in resource allocation in response to environmental changes and selective pressures, such as how experimental warming shifts fungal resource allocation from decay to cell metabolic maintenance (Romero‐Olivares et al ., 2019); and (3) traits that underpin ecological guilds or strategies, such as cellulose decomposition or stress tolerance (Zanne et al ., 2020). Phylogenetic signals or genome exploration for gene‐level traits can be helpful for identifying traits in organisms with no cultures and unknown function.…”