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Patterns and drivers of fungal diversity along an altitudinal gradient on Mount Gongga, China

  • Soils, Sec 5 • Soil and Landscape Ecology • Research Article
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Fungi are essential components of soil microbial communities and have a crucial role in biogeochemical processes. Alpine regions are sensitive to climate change, and the importance of changes in fungal community composition along altitudinal gradients in alpine regions is hotly debated.

Materials and methods

We used 454 pyrosequencing approaches to investigate the fungal communities at 1600, 2300, 2800, 3000, and 3900 m above sea level along an altitudinal gradient on Mount Gongga.

Results and discussion

The results showed that Agaricomycetes, Sordariomycetes, and Tremellomycetes are the dominant classes at all sampling sites. Operational taxonomic unit richness decreased with increasing altitude, and the fungal communities were clustered into three groups that corresponded to altitudes of, i.e., 1600, 2300, and above 2800 m. The evenness of fungi was not significantly correlated with altitude, whereas beta diversities were significantly correlated with altitude. The distance-based redundancy analysis and Mantel test indicated that the composition of fungal assemblages was mostly driven by altitude and temperature.

Conclusions

Our results indicated that ecological processes possibly related to altitude and temperature play an important role in structuring fungal biodiversity along the elevational gradient. Our results highlight that different microbes may respond differently to environmental gradients.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFC0501802) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41401276 and 41101238).

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Author notes

  1. Jianqing Tian and Bing Wu contributed equally to this paper

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jianqing Tian, Bing Wu, Na Jiang & Xingzhong Liu

  2. Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization and Ecological Restoration Biodiversity Conservation, Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Huai Chen

  3. Zoige Peatland and Global Change Research Station, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hongyuan, 624400, China

    Huai Chen

  4. Institute of Wetland Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, 100091, China

    Xiaoming Kang

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  1. Jianqing Tian
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  3. Huai Chen
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Correspondence to Xingzhong Liu.

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Tian, J., Wu, B., Chen, H. et al. Patterns and drivers of fungal diversity along an altitudinal gradient on Mount Gongga, China. J Soils Sediments 17, 2856–2865 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-017-1701-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-017-1701-9

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