Rainfall homogenizes while fruiting increases diversity of spore deposition in Mediterranean conditions

Abstract

There is a lack of knowledge regarding the main factors modulating fungal spore deposition in forest ecosystems. We have described the local spatio-temporal dynamics of fungal spore deposition along a single fruiting season and its relation with fruit body emergence and rainfall events. Passive spore traps were weekly sampled during autumn and analysed by metabarcoding of the ITS2 region in combination with qPCR. There were larger compositional changes of deposited spores across sampling weeks than amongst sampling plots. Spore diversity and abundance correlated with mushroom emergence and weekly rainfall. Spore compositional changes were related to rainfall, with lower spatial compositional heterogeneity across plots during weeks with higher rainfall. Soil saprotrophs, and amongst them, puffball species, showed the strongest positive correlation with rainfall across fungal guilds. We saw high fine-scale temporal changes of deposited spores, and both mushroom emergence and rainfall may be important factors driving airborne spore deposition. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd and British Mycological Society. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Fungal diversity; Atmospheric diversity; qPCR; DNA barcoding; Spore traps; Dispersion

Published in

Fungal Ecology
2019, Volume: 41, pages: 279-288 Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• Castaño Soler, Carles

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Oliva Palau, Jonàs

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology
Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.funeco.2019.07.007

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/102174