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Unexpected fungal communities in the Rehai thermal springs of Tengchong influenced by abiotic factors

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Abstract

Fungal communities represent an indispensable part of the geothermal spring ecosystem; however, studies on fungal community within hot springs are still scant. Here, we used Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencing to detect fungal community diversity in extremely acidic hot springs (pH < 4) and neutral and alkaline springs (pH > 6) of Tengchong—indicated by the presence of over 0.75 million valid reads. These sequences were phylogenetically assigned to 5 fungal phyla, 67 order, and 375 genera, indicating unexpected fungal diversity in the hot springs. The genera such as Penicillium, Entyloma, and Cladosporium dominated the fungal community in the acidic geothermal springs, while the groups such as Penicillium, Engyodontium, and Schizophyllum controlled the fungal assemblages in the alkaline hot springs. The alpha-diversity indices and the abundant fungal taxa were significantly correlated with physicochemical factors of the hot springs particularly pH, temperature, and concentrations of Fe2+, NH4+, NO −,2 and S2−, suggesting that the diversity and distribution of fungal assemblages can be influenced by the complex environmental factors of hot springs.

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Acknowledgements

We are especially grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript. The work was financed by Key Project of International Cooperation of Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) (Nos. 2013DFA31980, 2015FY110100), National Natural Science Foundation Program of China (No. 31100017), Shaanxi University of Technology (Nos. SLGQD16-06, SLGQD16-07), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2016M602566) and Visiting Scholar Grant of State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-Sen University (No. SKLBC14F02). W-J Li is also supported by projected from Guangdong Province Higher Vocational Colleges & Schools Pearl River Scholar Funded Scheme (2014). The manuscript has been linguistically edited by Natalie Kaplan, Johns Hopkins University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Science and Engineering, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, 723001, Shaanxi, China

    Kai-Hui Liu, Xiao-Wei Ding, Bo Zhang, Xiao-Fei Tang & Baiwan Deng

  2. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Nimaichand Salam & Wen-Jun Li

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  1. Kai-Hui Liu
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Liu, KH., Ding, XW., Salam, N. et al. Unexpected fungal communities in the Rehai thermal springs of Tengchong influenced by abiotic factors. Extremophiles 22, 525–535 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-018-1014-y

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