Phylogenetic imprint of woody plants on the soil mycobiome in natural mountain forests of eastern China

Abstract

Recent studies have detected strong phylogenetic signals in tree-fungus associations for diseased leaves and mycorrhizal symbioses. However, the extent of plant phylogenetic constraints on the free-living soil mycobiome remains unknown, especially at broad geographic scales. Here, 343 soil samples were collected adjacent to individual tree trunks, representing 58 woody plant species located in five mountain forests of eastern China. Integrating plant species identity and phylogenetic information, we aimed to unravel the relative contributions of phylogenetic relationships among tree species, abiotic environmental filtering, and geographic isolation to the geographic distribution of soil mycobiome. We found that the community dissimilarities of total fungi and each dominant guild (viz. saprotrophs, plant pathogens, and ectomycorrhizal fungi) significantly increased with increasing plant phylogenetic distance. Plant phylogenetic eigenvectors explained 11.4% of the variation in community composition, whereas environmental and spatial factors explained 24.1% and 7.2% of the variation, respectively. The communities of ectomycorrhizal fungi and plant pathogens were relatively more strongly affected by plant phylogeny than those of saprotrophs (13.7% and 10.4% vs. 8.5%). Overall, our results demonstrate how plant phylogeny, environment, and geographic space contribute to forest soil fungal distributions and suggest that the influence of plant phylogeny on fungal association may differ by guilds.

Effects of host phylogeny, habitat and spatial proximity on host specificity and diversity of pathogenic and mycorrhizal fungi in a subtropical forest

“…By disentangling the individual and joint influences of host phylogeny, abiotic conditions and spatial proximity on the assembly of PF and MF communities, we found that the independent effects of host phylogeny accounted for > 60% of the explained variation in richness and composition for both fungal guildsat least three times that of any other single factor, or their interactions. The strong effects of host phylogeny on MF relative to other factors coincides with previous studies conducted on a wide phylogenetic range of plants van der Linde et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019), yet conflicts with studies involving more closely related plant species (Morris et al, 2008;Glassman et al, 2017). Our finding that the effect of host phylogeny on MF increased at a larger phylogenetic scale to a greater extent than in PF (Fig.…”

“…Differences in the factors determining ECM fungal communities have also been demonstrated (e.g. Tedersoo et al ., ; Yang et al ., vs Morris et al ., ; and Glassman et al ., ). In our study, the total contribution of the environment and space did not account for > 27% of explained variation in the richness or community composition of either guild, consistent with Tedersoo et al .…”

“…New Phytologist environment and space) is poorly known. Most previous studies have focused on mycorrhizal fungi (Bahram et al, 2012;, with little emphasis on plant pathogens, and even less on PF and MF within the same study system (Bennett & Klironomos, 2018;Yang et al, 2019). This leaves little understanding on how these two functionally opposing guilds may coevolve with specific hosts and how this specificity might be affected by environment and space.…”

The spatial scale dependence of diazotrophic and bacterial community assembly in paddy soil

“…A previous study showed that patchy species aggregation in bulk soil might lead to divergent composition of communities (Faust & Raes, ). Species competition–cooperation trade‐offs might also have shifted with changes in availale nutrients in the rhizosphere (Yang et al, ), leading to variation in community composition within the local scale (Chesson & Huntly, ; Kneitel & Chase, ; Tilman, ). Third, sampling across the whole region might not have contributed to significant increases in bacterial diversity above what was already observed at the local scale.…”

Soil fungal assemblage complexity is dependent on soil fertility and dominated by deterministic processes

“…Tedersoo et al (2014) reported that soil fungal community composition could be best predicted by climatic, edaphic and floristic factors at the global scale. Similarly, Yang et al (2019) proposed that abiotic environmental filtering was the dominant driving force on soil fungal biogeography even after considering the effects of biotic interaction. Table 1 The proportion of the lowest Akaike information criterion (AIC) value for six species rank abundance distribution models of fungal communities on the local scale and regional scale.…”