Abiotic environmental factors drive the diversity, compositional dynamics and habitat preference of ectomycorrhizal fungi in Pannonian forest types

József Geml; Carla Mota Leal; Richárd Nagy; József Sulyok

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.1007935

Abiotic environmental factors drive the diversity, compositional dynamics and habitat preference of ectomycorrhizal fungi in Pannonian forest types

Front Microbiol. 2022 Oct 12:13:1007935. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.1007935. eCollection 2022.

Authors

József Geml^{1

2}, Carla Mota Leal¹, Richárd Nagy², József Sulyok³

Affiliations

¹ ELKH-EKKE Lendület Environmental Microbiome Research Group, Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary.
² Research and Development Centre, Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary.
³ Biodiversity Protection Group, Bükk National Park Directorate, Eger, Hungary.

Abstract

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi are among the most diverse and dominant fungal groups in temperate forests and are crucial for ecosystem functioning of forests and their resilience toward disturbance. We carried out DNA metabarcoding of ECM fungi from soil samples taken at 62 sites in the Bükk Mountains in northern Hungary. The selected sampling sites represent the characteristic Pannonian forest types distributed along elevation (i.e., temperature), pH and slope aspect gradients. We compared richness and community composition of ECM fungi among forest types and explored relationships among environmental variables and ECM fungal alpha and beta diversity. The DNA sequence data generated in this study indicated strong correlations between fungal community composition and environmental variables, particularly with pH and soil moisture, with many ECM fungi showing preference for specific zonal, topographic or edaphic forest types. Several ECM fungal genera showed significant differences in richness among forest types and exhibited strong compositional differences mostly driven by differences in environmental factors. Despite the relatively high proportions of compositional variance explained by the tested environmental variables, a large proportion of the compositional variance remained unexplained, indicating that both niche (environmental filtering) and neutral (stochastic) processes shape ECM fungal community composition at landscape level. Our work provides unprecedented insights into the diversity, landscape-level distribution, and habitat preferences of ECM fungi in the Pannonian forests of Northern Hungary.

Keywords: Basidiomycota; ITS rDNA; community assembly; forest ecology; habitat partitioning.

Grants and funding

The molecular analyses were funded by a grant (OTKA K21 139387) by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office and by the Lendület Program (no. 96049) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, both awarded to JG. The chemical analyses were funded by the Bükk National Park Directorate.