Fungal OTUs during dead wood succession of aspen

During decomposition of organic matter, microbial communities may follow different successional trajectories depending on the initial environment and colonizers. The timing and order of the assembly history can lead to divergent communities through priority effects. We explored how assembly history and substrate quality affected fungal dead wood communities and decomposition, 1.5 and 4.5 years after tree felling. In addition, we investigated the effect of invertebrate exclusion during the first two summers. For aspen (Populus tremula) logs, we measured initial bark and wood resource quality, and surveyed the fungal communities by DNA metabarcoding at different time points during succession. We found that a gradient in fungal community composition was related to resource quality and we discuss how this may reflect tolerance-dominance trade-offs in fungal life history strategies. As with previous studies, the initial amount of bark tannins was negatively correlated with wood decomposition...