Preliminary studies on diversity of soil microfungi from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard

Preliminary results of microfungi isolated from soils of Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway during the familiarisation trip in July 2006 will be presented. Twenty three soil samples were collected during from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway in July 2006. Nineteen samples were collected around Ny-Ålesund while another four were from sea sediment. Soil samples were plated using modification of Warcup’s soil plating method. Approximately 1 gram of soils was placed in Petri dish and cooled autoclaved potato dextrose agar (PDA) was poured on the Petri dish containing the soil. The Petri dishes were shook horizontally to distribute the soils evenly. Soil plates were incubated at 4 ºC and 25ºC (room temperature). In total, 89 fungal species including three yeasts were isolated from soil of Svalbard, Norway. Sixty one species were isolated from plates incubated in 25ºC and 44 species were isolated from 4ºC. Sixteen species occurred in both 25 and 4ºC. High number of fungal species recorded in 25ºC than 4ºC, while about 18 percent of total isolated fungi live in both 4ºC and 25ºC.

Runnel sediment (05 Runnel) gives the highest number of fungal occurrence followed by sample ‘34 Old Mine Mound’ and sample ‘15 Glacial Sediment’. Sample ‘05 Runnel’ showed the highest number of occurrence with 33 fungal species occurred in total. Twelve species occurred at 4ºC and 22 species occurred at 25ºC. Sp. 6 occurred at both temperatures. Twenty five fungal species occurred from sample ‘34 Old Mine Mound’ where eight species were isolated at 4ºC and 18 species were isolated at 25ºC. Sp. 8 and Sp. 18 were isolated from both 4 and 25ºC. Twenty one fungal species occurred from sample ‘15 Glacial Sediment’, 13 species were isolated from plates incubated at 4ºC and nine species at 25ºC only one species that is Sp.47 was isolated from both 4ºC and 25ºC.

The most frequent occurred species in this study are Sp. 1 and Sp. 3 with 15.76 and 14.67 percent of total occurrence. Sp. 1 was isolated from 15 sites with 29 occurrence recorded while Sp. 3 was isolated from 12 sites and 27 occurrence recorded. Sp. 2, 6, 9 and 10 were isolated more frequent than the rest of the fungal species. No fungal species was isolated from sample ’10 Twin Lake – (foam)’ and ‘30 AWS 20m deep sea sediment drilling 6-8cm’. Out of 89 isolated fungal species only 28 species are psychrophilic. Sixteen species are psychrotrophic fungi and 45 species are mesophilic. Low number of psychrophilic fungi was recorded compared to mesophilic fungi.