Endemic and cosmopolitan fungal taxa exhibit differential abundances in total and active communities of Antarctic soils

Abstract

SummaryOur understanding of the diversity and community dynamics of soil fungi has increased greatly through the use of DNA‐based identification. Community characterization of metabolically active communities via RNA sequencing has previously revealed differences between ‘active’ and ‘total’ fungal communities, which may be influenced by the persistence of DNA from nonactive components. However, it is not known how fungal traits influence their prevalence in these contrasting community profiles. In this study, we coextracted DNA and RNA from soil collected from three Antarctic islands to test for differences between total and active soil fungal communities. By matching these geographically isolated fungi against a global dataset of soil fungi, we show that widely dispersed taxa are often more abundant in the total community, whilst taxa restricted to Antarctica are more likely to have higher abundance in the active community. In addition, we find that active communities have lower richness, and show a reduction in the abundance of the most dominant fungi, whilst there are consistent differences in the abundances of certain taxonomic groups between the total and active communities. These results suggest that the views of soil fungal communities offered by DNA‐ and RNA‐based characterization differ in predictable ways.

DNA- and RNA- Derived Fungal Communities in Subsurface Aquifers Only Partly Overlap but React Similarly to Environmental Factors

“…This accentuates the fact that although the overall fungal alpha diversity (which is a qualitative measure) of total and active fungal communities does not differ significantly, the community composition (quantitative measure) is significantly different between the two communities. Such differences in total and active microbial community compositions were also reported from studies in forest soils [14,16,17], root-associated microbial communities [19], marine samples [46] and in the anaerobic digestion processes [43,47]. De Vrieze, et al [43] suggested that multiple microbial species are able to occupy the same niche with only a part of them being active at each time point.…”

“…In contrast, by extracting transcribed RNA and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) based sequencing, the active members of fungal communities can be targeted [4,13,14]. This approach can even be used for targeting the universal DNA barcode region for fungi, the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) [15], and the few available studies showed that rRNA derived fungal communities differ from those derived from rDNA at the levels of richness, abundance of certain taxa and overall community composition [14,16,17,18,19]. However, such studies comparing total and active fungal communities have mostly been carried out either in surface soils from different biomes [14,16,17,20], or in communities associated with different plant species [19,21], but equivalent studies in subsurface aquatic ecosystems are largely missing.…”

Diverse groups of fungi are associated with plastics in the surface waters of the Western South Atlantic and the Antarctic Peninsula

“…In our data set, Chytrids were detected, particularly from samples from the AP, but had a low frequency despite often having a high relative abundance in samples where they were present. In Arctic systems Chytrids have been reported as the most abundant fungi group in ice cores (Hassett, Ducluzeau, & Collins, 2017; Hassett & Gradinger, 2016) and seawater (Comeau, Vincent, Bernier, & Lovejoy, 2016), A diversity of Chytrids and other basal fungi have been found in lakes on the Antarctic continent (Rojas‐Jimenez et al., 2017), and in Antarctica soils (Cox, Newsham, & Robinson, 2019) as well as on organic particles in the Scotia sea (Duret et al., 2020). Our study demonstrated the benefit of using a combination of marker genes for epiplastic fungi.…”

Fungal Community in Antarctic Soil Along the Retreating Collins Glacier (Fildes Peninsula, King George Island)

“…The fungi found throughout the Collins Glacier retreated soils are cosmopolitan. According to Cox et al [74], endemic and cosmopolitan fungi may have different dispersal strategies and degrees of adaptations to the extreme environment of these soils. Distribution patterns of microbes can influence their abundance in communities.…”