Abstract
Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungal taxonomic, phylogenetic, and trait diversity (exploration types) were analyzed in beech and conifer forests along a north-to-south gradient in three biogeographic regions in Germany. The taxonomic community structures of the ectomycorrhizal assemblages in top soil were influenced by stand density and forest type, by biogeographic environmental factors (soil physical properties, temperature, and precipitation), and by nitrogen forms (amino acids, ammonium, and nitrate). While α-diversity did not differ between forest types, β-diversity increased, leading to higher γ-diversity on the landscape level when both forest types were present. The highest taxonomic diversity of EM was found in forests in cool, moist climate on clay and silty soils and the lowest in the forests in warm, dry climate on sandy soils. In the region with higher taxonomic diversity, phylogenetic clustering was found, but not trait clustering. In the warm region, trait clustering occurred despite neutral phylogenetic effects. These results suggest that different forest types and favorable environmental conditions in forests promote high EM species richness in top soil presumably with both high functional diversity and phylogenetic redundancy, while stressful environmental conditions lead to lower species richness and functional redundancy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank R. Schulz and T. Klein for the help with the field work and G. Lehmann for technical assistance. We thank the managers of the three Exploratories, Kirsten Reichel-Jung, Swen Renner, Katrin Hartwich, Sonja Gockel, Kerstin Wiesner, and Martin Gorke for their work in maintaining the plot and project infrastructure; Christiane Fischer and Simone Pfeiffer for giving support through the central office; Michael Owonibi for managing the central database; and Karl Eduard Linsenmair, Dominik Hessenmöller, Jens Nieschulze, Daniel Prati, François Buscot, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Wolfgang W. Weisser, and the late Elisabeth Kalko for their role in setting up the Biodiversity Exploratories project. Field work permits were issued by the responsible state environmental offices of Baden-Württemberg, Thüringen, and Brandenburg (according to § 72 BbgNatSchG).
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The work has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG Priority Program 1374 “Infrastructure-Biodiversity-Exploratories” under grant numbers PO362/18-3 (A. Polle) and PE 2256/1-1 (R. Pena).
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Table S1 Ectomycorrhzial fungi, accession numbers of their ITS sequences and exploration types. Table S2: PCA Scores and loadings for different categories of environmenal variables. Stars indicate significant principle components (PC). Table S3: List of environmental variables after collinearity analyses. Table S4: Scores for the tested explanatory variables (vectors in NMDS). (XLSX 33 kb)
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Pena, R., Lang, C., Lohaus, G. et al. Phylogenetic and functional traits of ectomycorrhizal assemblages in top soil from different biogeographic regions and forest types. Mycorrhiza 27, 233–245 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-016-0742-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-016-0742-z