Nature conservation in the genomic era: soil fungal diversity assessment in protected coastal Salix repens communities in the Netherlands using DNA metabarcoding. Salix repens fungi

Western European coastal sand dunes are highly important for nature conservation, with communities of the creeping willow (Salix repens) considered particularly diverse. We report here the results of the first kingdom-wide fungal diversity assessment in S. repens coastal dune vegetation. We sampled soil at ten sites in an extended area of joined nature reserves of high ecological value located along the North Sea coast of the Netherlands and generated and analyzed 688,434 ITS2 rDNA sequences using 454 pyrosequencing methods. Fungal communities in Salix repens beds are highly diverse and we detected 1211 non-singleton fungal 97% sequence similarity OTUs. Our large-scale comparison along a north-south transect indicated strong correlation between soil pH and fungal community composition. Furthermore, by comparing our soil data with long-term sporocarp-based studies, we detected numerous red listed species in our samples, often from previously unknown locations. Our data indicates that some of the fungal species currently considered rare are likely more abundant than previously thought. Beside providing a wealth of information on the diversity of fungal communities and on the distribution of fungal species along the coastal dune habitats in the Netherlands, our study demonstrates the potential contribution of high-throughput soil sequencing studies to fungal mapping and the conservation of red listed fungal and plant species.

西欧沿海沙丘对于自然保护具有极高价值，其中匍匐柳（Salix repens）群落被认为拥有尤为丰富的物种多样性。本研究首次针对匍匐柳沿海沙丘植被开展了荷兰全国范围内的真菌多样性评估，现将相关结果报道如下。研究团队在荷兰北海沿岸一片由多个高生态价值自然保护区连片组成的广阔区域内的10个采样点采集了土壤样本，并采用454焦磷酸测序技术生成并分析了688434条ITS2核糖体DNA（ITS2 rDNA）序列。匍匐柳群落中的真菌群落具有极高的多样性，共检测到1211个非单峰的97%序列相似性操作分类单元（Operational Taxonomic Units，OTUs）。本次沿南北样带开展的大规模比较分析显示，土壤pH值与真菌群落组成之间存在显著相关性。此外，通过将本研究的土壤测序数据与长期基于子实体（sporocarp）的调查研究进行对比，我们在样本中检测到多种红色名录收录物种（red listed species），其中不少物种的分布地点此前未被记录。本研究数据表明，当前被认定为稀有的部分真菌物种，其实际种群丰度可能远超此前的认知。除了为荷兰沿海沙丘生境中的真菌群落多样性及真菌物种分布提供了大量详实的数据之外，本研究还证实了高通量土壤测序研究在真菌分布制图以及红色名录收录真菌与植物物种保护方面的潜在应用价值。