Soil fungal communities vary with precipitation but not with drought manipulations

We analyzed MiSeq-generated ITS2 data of fungal communities assayed by culture-dependent and -independent tools. MiSeq data characterizing communities from colony forming units were compared to those from environmental DNA, permitting estimation of proportion of culturable organisms. Comparisons of communities from two sites varying by nearly 50% in mean annual precipitation allowed for comparing communities across sites and comparisons of drought manipulations at each site allowed for determining community responses to long-term (four years) chronic drought.