Fairy rings harbor distinct soil fungal communities and high fungal diversity in a montane grassland

Abstract

Increasing numbers of fungal species have been described recently from semi-natural grassland soils, raising the conservation interest of these species-rich habitats. Here, we characterize the soil fungal community inhabiting six fairy rings in a montane grassland of the Eastern Pre-Pyrenees through fungal DNA metabarcoding of ITS2 amplicons. Distinct soil fungal communities were observed outside of the rings compared to inside the ring areas. Higher abundances of fungi belonging to Pleosporales and Eurotiales were observed outside fairy rings, whereas zones belonging to the fairy rings showed higher abundances of Agaricales. Fungal diversity was higher inside the rings than outside. We found diverse saprotrophic or putative saprotrophic taxa associated with the studied rings, including the genera Clavaria, Psathyrella, Tricholoma, Amanita and Lycoperdon. These findings highlight the importance of particular keystone taxa in the structuring of fungal communities and their effect on the overall grassland fungal community. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd and British Mycological Society. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Next-generation sequencing; Community ecology; Semi-natural grassland; Internal transcribed spacer; Secondary succession; Saprotrophy; Metabarcoding; Keystone species

Published in

Fungal Ecology
2020, Volume: 47, article number: 100962Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• Castaño Soler, Carles

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

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.funeco.2020.100962

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108383