Fungal communities of decomposing Populus grandidentata wood

We investigated the succession of fungal decomposer communities in course woody debris of different stages of decay in the tree species Populus grandidentata (bigtooth aspen). Fungi were studied across the 5 decay classes as well as standing dead. Decay class 1 was the least decayed, and decay class 5 was the most decayed. We also compared to soil communities near the sampling plot. Fungi were studied using meta barcoding by amplification of the ribosomal ITS2 region using primers from Toju et al. (2012). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040863.