Forest-biodiversity

The project will consist in a study of the diversity of oomycete and ectomycorrhizae fungi communities associated with beech trees along several temperature gradients, i.e. 3 altitudinal gradients in the Pyrenees (5 plots), Alps (5 plots) and Vosges (3 plots) mountains. In a first step, we will do a hierarchical sampling in one of the gradient to determine the better sampling strategy. The 2 communities will be studied on each plot by a 454 pyrosequencing technique using sequences of the ribosomal ITS DNA. We will relate the diversity of the communities to the sites average annual temperature.