Biogeography and Tree's Signature of Neighboring Mycobiome in Eastern China Forests

The mixed deciduous forest in Eastern China represents relics of once widespread Tertiary mesophytic forests that span the Northern Hemisphere. Here, we sampled the topsoil that corresponded to 343 tree individuals in the five mountain forests of Eastern Asia, exploring the diversity and community composition of tree-associated fungi by using Illumina sequencing of the ITS1 region. The tree-targeted sampling approach is expected to reveal the striking co-distribution pattern between plants and soil fungi.We found that several soil properties and potential evapotranspiration were the best predictors of soil fungal richness, accumulatively explaining 25.2% of richness variation. Space, climate, soil and floristic factors accumulatively explained 25% of variation in community composition. Likewise, the significant effects of site, plant identity and phylogeny were found on soil fungal assemblages. The significant distance-decay relationships were observed for fungal community across whole area and individual mountains.