Ecological succession reveals potential signatures of marine-terrestrial transition in salt marsh fungal communities

0468958 - MBÚ 2017 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Dini-Andreote, F. - Pylro, V.S. - Baldrian, Petr - van Elsas, J.D. - Salles, J.F.
Ecological succession reveals potential signatures of marine-terrestrial transition in salt marsh fungal communities.
The ISME Journal. Roč. 10, č. 8 (2016), s. 1984-1997. ISSN 1751-7362. E-ISSN 1751-7370
Institutional support: RVO:61388971
Keywords : MICROBIAL DIVERSITY * REDUNDANCY ANALYSIS * CARBON DYNAMICS
Subject RIV: EE - Microbiology, Virology
Impact factor: 9.664, year: 2016

Marine-to-terrestrial transition represents one of the most fundamental shifts in microbial life. Understanding the distribution and drivers of soil microbial communities across coastal ecosystems is critical given the roles of microbes in soil biogeochemistry and their multifaceted influence on landscape succession. Here, we studied the fungal community dynamics in a well-established salt marsh chronosequence that spans over a century of ecosystem development. We focussed on providing high-resolution assessments of community composition, diversity and ecophysiological shifts that yielded patterns of ecological succession through soil formation. Notably, despite containing 10- to 100-fold lower fungal internal transcribed spacer abundances, early-successional sites revealed fungal richnesses comparable to those of more mature soils. These newly formed sites also exhibited significant temporal variations in beta-diversity that may be attributed to the highly dynamic nature of the system imposed by the tidal regime. The fungal community compositions and ecophysiological assignments changed substantially along the successional gradient, revealing a clear signature of ecological replacement and gradually transforming the environment from a marine into a terrestrial system. Moreover, distance-based linear modelling revealed soil physical structure and organic matter to be the best predictors of the shifts in fungal beta-diversity along the chronosequence. Taken together, our study lays the basis for a better understanding of the spatiotemporally determined fungal community dynamics in salt marshes and highlights their ecophysiological traits and adaptation in an evolving ecosystem.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0267378