Homogeneous selection is stronger for fungi in deeper peat than in shallow peat in the low-temperature fens of China

Jianqing Tian; Xinya Huang; Huai Chen; Xiaoming Kang; Yanfen Wang

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2022.113312

Homogeneous selection is stronger for fungi in deeper peat than in shallow peat in the low-temperature fens of China

Environ Res. 2022 Sep;212(Pt D):113312. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.113312. Epub 2022 May 2.

Authors

Jianqing Tian¹, Xinya Huang², Huai Chen³, Xiaoming Kang⁴, Yanfen Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China; State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China. Electronic address: tianjq@ibcas.ac.cn.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China. Electronic address: chenhuai@cib.ac.cn.
⁴ Institute of Wetland Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, 100091, China.
⁵ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.

PMID: 35513061
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.113312

Abstract

Peatlands have accumulated enormous amounts of carbon over millennia, and climate changes threatens the release of this carbon into the atmosphere. Fungi are crucial drivers of global carbon cycling because they are the principal decomposer of organic matter in peatlands. However, the fungal community composition and ecological preferences in peat remain unclear, which restricts our ability to evaluate the role of the fungal community in peat biogeochemical functions. We investigated 54 soils from 6 low-temperature peatlands across China to fill this knowledge gap. The peat was divided into above-water table (AWT) and below-water table (BWT) layers based on the water table fluctuation. We investigated fungal community assembly processes and drivers for each peat layer. The results showed that fungal communities differed significantly among peat layers. The relative abundance of symbiotrophs was significantly higher in the AWT (17.4%) than in the BWT (9.0%), while the abundances of yeast and litter saprotrophs were obviously lower in the AWT than in the BWT. Our results revealed that the assemblage of both fungal taxonomic and phylogenetic communities was mainly governed by stochastic processes in both AWT (87.8%) and BWT (58.6%) layers. However, in the BWT, the relative importance of deterministic processes (28.4%) significantly increased, indicating a potential deterministic environmental selection induced by permanently anaerobic condition. Mean annual precipitation and mean annual temperature were the most critical drives for the assemblage of the fungal community in the BWT. These observations collectively indicate that fungal community assembly is depth-dependent, implying different community assembly mechanisms and ecological functions along the peat profile. These findings highlight the importance of climate driven deep peat fungal community composition assemblages and suggest the potential to project the changes in fungal diversity with ongoing climate change.

Keywords: Dispersal limitation; Fen; Homogeneous selection; Mean annual precipitation; Yeast.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Carbon / analysis
China
Fungi
Phylogeny
Soil Microbiology*
Soil* / chemistry
Temperature

Substances

Soil
Carbon