Composition and Diversity of Soil Fungi in Dipterocarpaceae-Dominated Seasonal Tropical Forests in Thailand

Abstract

Although fungi play essential roles in nutrient cycles and plant growth in forest ecosystems, limited information is currently available on the community compositions of soil fungi in tropical forests. Few studies have examined fungal community structures in seasonal tropical forests, in which forest fires potentially have a large impact on above- and belowground community processes. Based on high-throughput sequencing technologies, we herein examined the diversity and community structures of soil fungi in dry seasonal tropical forests in Sakaerat, northeast Thailand. We found that fungal community compositions diverged among dry evergreen, dry deciduous, and fire-protected dry deciduous forests within the region. Although tree species diversity did not positively correlate with soil fungal diversity, the coverage of an understory bamboo species (Vietnamosasa pusilla) showed a strong relationship with fungal community structures. Our community ecological analysis also yielded a list of fungi showing habitat preferences for either of the neighboring evergreen and deciduous forests in Sakaerat. The present results provide a basis for managing soil fungal communities and aboveground plant communities in seasonal tropical forests in Southeast Asia.

Cambisol Mycobiome in a Long-Term Field Experiment with Korean Pine as a Sole Edificator: A Case Study

“…As compared with the soil mycobiome under Korean red pine [26], our samples had a comparable number of different taxa, except for phyla, as only Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were found under the red pine. A similar predominance of Basidiomycota and Ascomycota, with other phyla being scarce, was reported for other forest soils [27][28][29][30][31].…”

Novel Mucor species (Mucoromycetes, Mucoraceae) from northern Thailand

“…Soil fungi play key roles in nutrient cycling and the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems (Torsvik and Øvreås 2002;Frąc et al 2018;Peng et al 2020;Zhou et al 2020). To date, only a few fungal taxonomic studies are available from tropical forest soil (Sato et al 2015;Amma et al 2018;Cordeiro et al 2020;Lima et al 2020). Taxonomic studies on these groups are even scarcer in Southeast Asia despite the region harboring extraordinary genetic diversity (Amma et al 2018).…”

“…To date, only a few fungal taxonomic studies are available from tropical forest soil (Sato et al 2015;Amma et al 2018;Cordeiro et al 2020;Lima et al 2020). Taxonomic studies on these groups are even scarcer in Southeast Asia despite the region harboring extraordinary genetic diversity (Amma et al 2018). Up to 96% of fungi isolated from the northern part of Thailand are projected to be novel taxa and new species are regularly being discovered (Hyde et al 2018;.…”

Fungal communities associated with forests in the Afromontane region of Ethiopia

“…Mushrooms can be used to generate income, improve food security (Abdulla, 2013;Degreef et al, 2016), treat diseases (Zeleke et al, 2020) and sustainably manage forest resources (Amma et al, 2018;Saha and Sundriyal, 2012). Previous studies in various parts of the world showed that mushrooms have good nutritional content, though varies with the species type (Tripathi et al, 2018).…”

“…Plantation forests especially fast growing tree species have been introduced in the country and planted mainly for fuelwood and timber. However, in the management of Ethiopian forests, the value of forest resources other than timber have been overlooked (Desalegn and Tadesse, 2004) and the NTFPs such as mushroom are not included in forest management plan of both natural and plantation forests resource of the country despite their potential contribution to the sustainable management of forest ecosystems (Amma et al, 2018) and ensuring food security of the nation. Because of this problem sustained deforestation and degradation has been recorded in Ethiopia (Asfaw and Etefa, 2017).…”