Seasonal variation in the soil fungal community structure of Larix gmelinii forests in Northeast China

Abstract

Soil fungi play an indispensable role in forest ecosystems by participating in energy flow, material circulation, and assisting plant growth and development. Larix gmelinii is the dominant tree species in the greater Khingan Mountains, which is the only cold temperate coniferous forest in China. Understanding the variations in underground fungi will help us master the situation of L. gmelinii above ground. We collected soil samples from three seasons and analyzed the differences in soil fungal community structure using high-throughput sequencing technology to study the seasonal changes in soil fungal community structure in L. gmelinii forests. We found that the Shannon and Chao1 diversity in autumn was significantly lower than in spring and summer. The community composition and functional guild varied significantly between seasons. Furthermore, we showed that ectomycorrhizal fungi dominated the functional guilds. The relative abundance of ectomycorrhizal fungi increased dramatically from summer to autumn and was significantly negatively correlated with temperature and precipitation. Temperature and precipitation positively affect the alpha diversity of fungi significantly. In addition, pH was negatively correlated with the Chao1 diversity. Temperature and precipitation significantly affected several dominant genera and functional guilds. Among the soil physicochemical properties, several dominant genera were affected by pH, and the remaining individual genera and functional guilds were significantly correlated with total nitrogen, available phosphorus, soil organic carbon, or cation exchange capacity. For the composition of total fungal community, temperature and precipitation, as well as soil physicochemical properties except AP, significantly drove the variation in community composition.

Spatial variations impact the soil fungal communities of Larix gmelinii forests in Northeast China

“…During the drier season, soil fungal abundance decreases compared to the wet season, but fungal diversity increases (Kivlin and Hawkes, 2016). In our previous study, variations in temperature and precipitation were important factors influencing seasonal changes in the fungal communities (Zhao et al, 2023). In fact, seasonal changes were masked by sites in this study.…”

“…Seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation are also responsible for variations in soil fungal communities (Tedersoo et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2018). In our previous study, temperature and precipitation were found to be the most important factors affecting fungal diversity with seasonal variations (Zhao et al, 2023). As for spatial differences, soil fungal communities have different structures between geographic sites, and their physicochemical properties directly constitute different fungal living environments, such as nitrogen (Zhou et al, 2016), pH (Zhang et al, 2016), and moisture (Zumsteg et al, 2013).…”

Soil mycobiomes in native European aspen forests and hybrid aspen plantations have a similar fungal richness but different compositions, mainly driven by edaphic and floristic factors

“…A study in Austria found no Populus tremula- associated EcM taxa that were significantly associated with summer or autumn conditions ( Krpata et al, 2008 ). Yet many studies have found significance of seasonal factors on fungal relative abundance ( Zhao et al, 2023 ) and community compositions ( Vargas-Gastélum et al, 2015 ; Beidler et al, 2023 ). Others have suggested that host-tree characteristics have more impact than the seasonal factor alone in describing changes in fungal communities ( Park et al, 2020 ), thus the seasonal factor should be considered in interaction with tree or site characteristics.…”

Characteristics of the Rhizospheric AMF Community and Nutrient Contents of the Dominant Grasses in Four Microhabitats of the Subalpine Zone in Northwestern Yunnan, China

“…Similar trends also emerged for Acaulospora and Paraglomus (Figure 9B). This finding was associated with an increase in apoplastic substances during the winter season, as well as diminished growth rates of plants resulting from lower temperature and precipitation relative to the summer season [19].…”