Plant species richness and productivity determine the diversity of soil fungal guilds in temperate coniferous forest and bog habitats

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Abstract

Fungi have important roles as decomposers, mycorrhizal root symbionts and pathogens in forest ecosystems, but there is limited information about their diversity and composition at the landscape scale. This work aimed to disentangle the factors underlying fungal richness and composition along the landscape-scale moisture, organic matter and productivity gradients. Using high-throughput sequencing, we identified soil fungi from 54 low-productivity Pinus sylvestris-dominated plots across three study areas in Estonia and determined the main predictors of fungal richness based on edaphic, floristic and spatial variables. Fungal richness displayed unimodal relationship with organic matter and deduced soil moisture. Plant richness and productivity constituted the key predictors for taxonomic richness of functional guilds. Composition of fungi and the main ectomycorrhizal fungal lineages and hyphal exploration types was segregated by moisture availability and soil nitrogen. We conclude that plant productivity and diversity determine the richness and proportion of most functional groups of soil fungi in low-productive pine forests on a landscape scale. Adjacent stands of pine forest may differ greatly in the dominance of functional guilds that have marked effects on soil carbon and nitrogen cycling in these forest ecosystems.

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