School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, UK.
Faculty of Science, Northern Border University, Arar, Saudi Arabia.
ISME J. 2019 May;13(5):1330-1344. doi: 10.1038/s41396-019-0350-y. Epub 2019 Jan 28.
The composition and structure of plant-root-associated fungal communities are determined by local abiotic and biotic conditions. However, the relative influence and identity of relationships to abiotic and biotic factors may differ across environmental and ecological contexts, and fungal functional groups. Thus, understanding which aspects of root-associated fungal community ecology generalise across contexts is the first step towards a more predictive framework. We investigated how the relative importance of biotic and abiotic factors scale across environmental and ecological contexts using high-throughput sequencing (ca. 55 M Illumina metabarcoding sequences) of >260 plant-root-associated fungal communities from six UK salt marshes across two geographic regions (South-East and North-West England) in winter and summer. Levels of root-associated fungal diversity were comparable with forests and temperate grasslands, quadrupling previous estimates of salt-marsh fungal diversity. Whilst abiotic variables were generally most important, a range of site- and spatial scale-specific abiotic and biotic drivers of diversity and community composition were observed. Consequently, predictive models of diversity trained on one site, extrapolated poorly to others. Fungal taxa from the same functional groups responded similarly to the specific drivers of diversity and composition. Thus site, spatial scale and functional group are key factors that, if accounted for, may lead to a more predictive understanding of fungal community ecology.
植物根际真菌群落的组成和结构由当地的非生物和生物条件决定。然而，在不同的环境和生态背景下，以及在真菌功能群中，非生物和生物因素的相对影响和关系可能会有所不同。因此，了解根际真菌群落生态学中哪些方面具有跨背景的普遍性是建立更具预测性框架的第一步。我们使用来自英格兰东南部和西北部的六个英国盐沼中超过 260 个植物根际真菌群落的高通量测序（约 5500 万条 Illumina 宏条形码序列），研究了生物和非生物因素的相对重要性如何在环境和生态背景下发生变化。根际真菌多样性的水平与森林和温带草原相当，是以前对盐沼真菌多样性估计的四倍。虽然非生物变量通常是最重要的，但在不同的地点和空间尺度上观察到了一系列特定的生物和非生物多样性和群落组成的驱动因素。因此，在一个地点训练的多样性预测模型在其他地点的外推效果很差。来自相同功能群的真菌类群对多样性和组成的特定驱动因素有相似的反应。因此，地点、空间尺度和功能群是关键因素，如果加以考虑，可能会导致对真菌群落生态学的更具预测性的理解。
