School of Life Science and Technology, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.
Yinshanbeilu Grassland Eco-hydrology National Observation and Research Station, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Inner Mongolia, China.
PeerJ. 2023 Jul 14;11:e15626. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15626. eCollection 2023.
Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi play a vital role in ensuring plant health, plant diversity, and ecosystem function. However, the study on fungal diversity and community assembly of EM fungi associated with herbaceous plants remains poorly understood. Thus, in our study, and in the subalpine meadow of central Inner Mongolia, China were selected for exploring EM fungal diversity and community assembly mechanisms by using llumina MiSeq sequencing of the fungal internal transcribed spacer 2 region (ITS2). We evaluated the impact of soil, climatic, and spatial variables on EM fungal diversity and community turnover. Deterministic . stochastic processes for EM fungal community assembly were quantified using -Nearest taxon index scores. The results showed that a total of 70 EM fungal OTUs belonging to 21 lineages were identified, of which , Helotiales1, were the most dominant EM fungal lineages. EM fungal communities were significantly different between the two herbaceous plants and among the two sampling sites, and this difference was mainly influenced by soil organic matter (OM) content and mean annual precipitation (MAP). The neutral community model (NCM) explained 45.7% of the variations in EM fungi community assembly. A total of 99.27% of the -Nearest Taxa Index (NTI) value was between -2 and 2. These results suggest that the dominant role of stochastic processes in shaping EM fungal community assembly. In addition, RC values showed that ecological drift in stochastic processes dominantly determined community assembly of EM fungi. Overall, our study shed light on the EM fungal diversity and community assembly associated with herbaceous plants in the subalpine region of central Inner Mongolia for the first time, which provided a better understanding of the role of herbaceous EM fungi.
外生菌根（EM）真菌在确保植物健康、植物多样性和生态系统功能方面发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，有关与草本植物相关的 EM 真菌多样性和群落组装的研究仍知之甚少。因此，我们选择在中国内蒙古中部亚高山草甸的 和 进行研究，通过 Illumina MiSeq 测序真菌内部转录间隔区 2 区域（ITS2）来探索 EM 真菌多样性和群落组装机制。我们评估了土壤、气候和空间变量对 EM 真菌多样性和群落周转率的影响。使用 -Nearest taxon index 得分量化了 EM 真菌群落组装的确定性和随机过程。结果表明，共鉴定出 70 个属于 21 个谱系的 EM 真菌 OTUs，其中 Helotiales1 和 Russulales 是最占优势的 EM 真菌谱系。两种草本植物之间以及两个采样点之间的 EM 真菌群落存在显著差异，这种差异主要受土壤有机质（OM）含量和年平均降水量（MAP）的影响。中性群落模型（NCM）解释了 EM 真菌群落组装变化的 45.7%。-Nearest Taxa Index（NTI）值的总和为 99.27%，介于-2 和 2 之间。这些结果表明，随机过程在塑造 EM 真菌群落组装方面起着主导作用。此外，RC 值表明，生态漂移在随机过程中主导决定 EM 真菌群落的组装。总体而言，我们的研究首次揭示了内蒙古中部亚高山地区与草本植物相关的 EM 真菌多样性和群落组装，这为理解草本 EM 真菌的作用提供了更好的认识。
