Survey of Saproxylic Fungi Communities from Franklin Parker Preserve, New Jersey, USA, via metabarcoding

The focus of this survey is fungi from Franklin Parker Reserve, NJ, that inhabit dead wood. In order to survey the communities of dead wood fungi, in June 2018, 7 drills were made in 10 logs, each drill was separated by 1 meter. Sawdust from each log was pooled. Logs included various stages of decay, also some were standing dead wood. Samples were collected for DNA to be extracted and for fungi to be identified. In order to do it, metabarcoding of sawdust samples is performed. The analysis includes DNA isolation from dead wood, PCR of ITS2 regions unique to fungi using tagged primers, and next generation sequencing (NGS). Results from NGS were analyzed via SCATA bioinformatics pipeline to identify the fungal samples in the sawdust. The work was performed by students of Kean University, NJ, in order to practice saproxylic biodiversity assessment, metabarcoding, and GBIF publication.