The community composition variation of Russulaceae associated with the forest during the growing season at Wudalianchi City, China.

BACKGROUND

Most species of the Russulaceae are ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi, which are widely distributed in different types of forest ecology and drive important ecological and economic functions. Little is known about the composition variation of the Russulaceae fungal community aboveground and in the root and soil during the growing season (June-October) from a forest. In this study, we investigated the changes in the composition of the Russulaceae during the growing season of this type of forest in Wudalianchi City, China.

METHODS

To achieve this, the Sanger sequencing method was used to identify the Russulaceae aboveground, and the high-throughput sequencing method was used to analyze the species composition of the Russulaceae in the root and soil. Moreover, we used the Pearson correlation analysis, the redundancy analysis and the multivariate linear regression analysis to analyze which factors significantly affected the composition and distribution of the Russulaceae fungal community.

RESULTS

A total of 56 species of Russulaceae were detected in the forest, which included 48 species of , seven species of , and one species of . was the dominant group. During the growing season, the sporocarps of appeared earlier than those of . The number of species aboveground exhibited a decrease after the increase and were significantly affected by the average monthly air temperature ( = -0.822, = 0.045), average monthly relative humidity ( = -0.826, = 0.043), monthly rainfall ( = 0.850, = 0.032), soil moisture ( = 0.841, = 0.036) and soil organic matter ( = 0.911, = 0.012). In the roots and soils under the forest, the number of species did not show an apparent trend. The number of species from the roots was the largest in September and the lowest in August, while those from the soils were the largest in October and the lowest in June. Both were significantly affected by the average monthly air temperature ( = 0.6083, = 0.040) and monthly rainfall ( = 0.6354, = 0.039). Moreover, the relative abundance of and in the roots and soils showed a linear correlation with the relative abundance of the other fungal genera.