The spatial patterns of community composition, their environmental drivers and their spatial scale dependence vary markedly between fungal ecological guilds

Aim

How community composition varies in space and what governs the variation has been extensively investigated in macroorganisms. However, we have only limited knowledge for microorganisms, especially fungi, despite their ecological and economic significance. Based on previous research, we define and test a series of hypotheses regarding the composition of fungal communities, its most influential drivers and their spatial scale dependence.

Location

Czech Republic.

Time period

Present.

Taxa studied

Fungi.

Methods

We analyzed the distance decay relationships, community composition and its drivers (physical distance, litter and soil chemistry, tree composition, climate) in fungi, using multivariate analyses. We compared the results across three fungal ecological guilds (ectomycorrhizal fungi, saprotrophs and yeasts), two forest microhabitats (litter and bulk soil) and six spatial scales (from 5 m to 80 km) that comprehensively cover the Czech Republic.

Results

We found that, similar to macroorganisms, the ectomycorrhizal fungi and saprotrophs showed marked distance-decay relationships, and their community composition was driven mainly by vegetation and dispersal at local scales, but at regional scales, by environmental effects. In contrast, the third fungal guild, the unicellular yeasts, showed little distance decay, suggesting extraordinary spatial homogeneity, as often seen in microorganisms, such as bacteria.

Main conclusions

Our results underscore the remarkable variation in the community ecology of fungi, which seems to range well-known patterns both from the macro- and the microworld. Knowledge of these patterns advances our understanding of the ecology of fungi, rather understudied organisms of significant ecological and economic importance, which our findings identify as a potentially suitable model for bridging the gaps between the biogeography of micro- and macroorganisms.