Influence of soil type and vertical zonation on soil fungal communities associated with natural jack pine forests

Natural jack pine forests established on sandy eskers and clayey soils represent a unique habitat in the boreal forest in northeastern Canada and are generally associated with well-differentiated soil horizons, but little is known regarding their soil fungal diversity and how soil type and vertical zonation would shape their communities. To address this question, we characterized soil fungal communities from litter, organic and mineral horizons in 18 natural jack pine forests in esker and clayey soils using ITS2 rDNA metabarcoding. Ectomycorrhizal fungi dominated the organic and mineral horizons in esker soils, while saprotrophic fungi were dominant in clayey soils. The dominance of ectomycorrhizal fungi coincided with higher C accumulation within the organic horizon in esker soils. The nutrient-poor and more acidic esker sites harbored less diverse ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic communities than clayey soils. Several stress-tolerant and melanin-rich fungal taxa were indicators of esk..., Study area
The study was conducted in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, Quebec (Canada). The study area is located in northern Quebec’s clay plain, within the balsam fir-paper birch (Abies balsamea (Linnaeus) Miller-Betula papyriferaMarshall) bioclimatic domain (Grondin 1996). Climatic conditions are subpolar, subhumid, and continental with an annual average temperature and precipitation of respectively between 1-2 °C and 825-975 mm according to the Canadian climate normal 1981-2010 station data (Environment Canada, 2023). Forest vegetation mainly consisted of jack pine stands with interspersed stems of Picea mariana (Miller) Britton, Sterns & Poggenburgh, Populus tremuloides Michaux, Betula papyrifera Marshall, Abies balsamea (Linnaeus) Miller, and Acer rubrum Linnaeus. Specifically, the Abitibi region is characterized by natural gradients of soil physicochemical properties, from sandy eskers to clayey soil types. Indeed, esker soils account for ~3% of the Abitibi’s surface while t..., , # Influence of soil type and vertical zonation on soil fungal communities associated with natural jack pine forests

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ffbg79d33](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ffbg79d33)

Three different datasets are presented. **First**, an XLSX file (**Fungal_ASV_dataset_non_rarefied.xlsx**) containing the occurrence of fungal ASVs across our samples, including extraction and PCR controls, based on an ITS2 Illumina metabarcoding (environmental DNA) technique. This dataset is non rarefied. This dataset also includes the taxonomic classification for each fungal ASV (at the Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species levels), as well as ecological classification and attributes (Trophic Mode, Guild, Growth Morphology, Trait, etc.). The confidence of these assignations is also indicated, as well as the source if applicable. **Second**, an XLSX file (**Fungal_sequence_correspondence_dataset.xlsx**) containing the correspondence between the ASVs presented in the first dataset (col...