Composition of fungal communities in woody debris and the underlying organic horizon

The organic Oe horizon of a spruce forest soil was incubated for 78 days without (control) and with woody debris (WD) of 8 tree species (Acer pseudoplatanus, Betula pendula, Fagus sylvatica, Fraxinus excelsior, Larix decidua, Picea abies, Pinus sylvestris and Quercus robur). DNA was extracted from WD and Oe samples using a phenol-chloroform protocol. Amplicon Libraries were constructed by amplifying the fungal barcoding regions (ITS rRNA gene) in two consecutive PCRs, with differentially tagged and indexed primers, respectively. Composition of the fungal communities was assessed by parallel sequencing of the amplicon libraries on an Illumina MiSeq sequencer.