Metabarcoding of Soil Fungi from Different Urban Greenspaces Around Bournemouth in the UK

Abstract

Soil microbes are important for public health. Increasing urbanisation is adversely affecting soil microbiota, which may be contributing to the global rise of immune-related diseases. Fungi are key components of urban environments that can be negatively impacted by altered land-use, land-management and climate change, and are implicated in the development and exacerbation of non-communicable diseases such as allergy, asthma and chronic inflammatory conditions. Fungal metagenomics is building knowledge on fungi within different environments (the environmental mycobiome), fungi on and within the human body (the human mycobiome), and their association with disease. Here, we demonstrate the added value of a multi-region metabarcoding approach to analyse soil mycobiomes from five urban greenspaces (lawns, parklands, bareground, young forest and old forest). While results were comparable across the three regions (ITS1, ITS2 and LSU), each identified additional fungal taxa that were unique to the region. Combining the results therefore provided a more comprehensive analysis across all fungal taxonomic ranks, identifying statistically significant differences in the fungal composition of the five soil types. Assignment of fungal taxa into ecological guilds revealed those differences of biological relevance to public health. The greatest differences were between the soil mycobiome of lawns and forests. Of most concern was the significant increase in the known human allergens Alternaria, Bipolaris, Cladosporium and Fusarium within urban lawn and parkland vs forest soils. By improving our understanding of local variations in fungal taxa across urban greenspaces, we have the potential to boost the health of local residents through improved urban planning.

How Deep Can the Endophytic Mycobiome Go? A Case Study on Six Woody Species from the Brazilian Cerrado

“…The high biodiversity of the plant endophytic mycobiome from other ecosystems [20,34,79] was corroborated in our study. Metabarcoding resulted in 3821 fungal OTUs distributed heterogeneously among the six host species analyzed.…”

Drivers of fungal diversity and community biogeography differ between green roofs and adjacent ground‐level green space

“…Lasiosphaeriaceae is the largest and most diverse paraphyletic family in the Sordariales order, containing roughly 30 genera (Huhndorf et al, 2004 ; Marin‐Felix et al, 2020 ). Although the lack of green roof studies with high taxonomic resolution make it difficult to determine whether Lasiosphaeriaceae are common in green roofs, prior research on ground‐level urban soils has shown the presence of Lasiosphaeriaceae (Marczylo et al, 2021 ; Wang, Ma, et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2019 ). The widespread occurrence of Lasiosphaeriaceae suggests that these fungi may become potential green roof specialists over time, but more studies examining the importance of Lasiosphaeriaceae in green roofs and other degraded urban landscapes are needed.…”

Spatial assortment of soil organisms supports the size-plasticity hypothesis

“…Noticeably, some soil pathogens were more locally-adapted in human-dominated than natural sites. For example, both the apicomplexan parasites of the family Gregarinomorphea (protist), and some members of the family Pleosporaceae (fungi), which were previously found in green spaces around Bournemouth city (UK) [ 75 ], dominated in urban and suburban sites. This calls for a deeper spatial assortment of pathogens in urban soils to help protecting plants, animals and humans.…”