Fungal communities along a vertical spruce soil profile

Assessment of seasonal changes in niche partitioning for individual fungi along a vertical soil profile. Fungal communities were analyzed in autumn and the following spring. In each season, four strata of four spruce forest soil cores were sampled. The fungal community was assessed by Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) of fungal barcoding regions in DNA extracts. Amplicon libraries were prepared by two consecutive PCRs, with TAG and index sequences introduced in the first (PCR1) and second PCR (PCR2), respectively. The Illumina MiSeq platform (Illumina Inc.) was used for paired end sequencing (2 × 250 bp; Kit v3 Chemistry) of the amplicon library.