MycoPhen: Year 1 seasonal patterns of ectomycorrhizal fungal communities at the Morton Arboretum

The timing of underground hyphal production is an ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal trait with large implications for ecosystem carbon budgets, however, our understanding of it remains limited. Here, we analyzed intra-annual temporal patterns of ECM fungal abundance across five temperate mono-dominant forest stands in Illinois, USA. We assessed ECM fungal absolute abundances using qPCR and relative abundances of soil cores collected at monthly intervals for one year based on ITS2 Illumina sequencing.