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Season-Long Experimental Drought Alters Fungal Community Composition but Not Diversity in a Grassland Soil

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Using terrestrial model ecosystems (TMEs), we investigated how reduced moisture conditions impact soil fungal communities from a temperate grassland over the course of an entire season. Starting at about 65% of the soil’s maximum water holding capacity (WHCmax), TME soils were adjusted to three moisture levels for 15 weeks: 70% WHCmax, approximating starting conditions, 50% WHCmax, and 30% WHCmax, representing reduced moisture conditions. Diversity and abundances of soil fungi at the start and at the end of the experiment were characterized using Illumina meta-barcoding. Community diversity at the end of the experiment did not differ between experimental moisture levels and was comparable to diversity measures from the field. However, fungal communities did change compositionally in both abundances and presence/absence of species. Analyzing class-level and individual contributions of fungi to these changes revealed that only a minor portion reacted significantly, indicating that most compositional change was likely driven by many consistent small-scale shifts in presence/absences or abundances. Together, our results show that prolonged reduction in soil moisture conditions will trigger compositional changes in soil fungal communities but not necessarily change overall diversity. We highlight the cumulative contribution of minor but consistent changes among community members, as opposed to significant responses of individual species. We also detected a strong general experimental effect on soil fungi that are moved from the field to experimental TMEs, suggesting the importance of acclimatization effects in these communities under laboratory conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the research funding program “LOEWE – Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-Ökonomischer Exzellenz” of Hesse’s Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and the Arts (Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre BiK-F). We thank Dr. Bob O’Hara for valuable discussion of methods and results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Senckenberganlage 25, 60325, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Philipp-André Schmidt, Imke Schmitt, Jürgen Otte, Cornelia Bandow, Jörg Römbke, Miklós Bálint & Gregor Rolshausen

  2. Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Institut für Ökologie, Evolution und Diversität, Max-von-Laue-Str. 13, 60438, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Philipp-André Schmidt, Imke Schmitt & Cornelia Bandow

  3. ECT Oekotoxikologie GmbH, 65439, Flörsheim/Main, Germany

    Cornelia Bandow & Jörg Römbke

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  1. Philipp-André Schmidt
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  2. Imke Schmitt
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  4. Cornelia Bandow
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Correspondence to Miklós Bálint or Gregor Rolshausen.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary Figure S1

Soil moisture of terrestrial soil ecosystems (TMEs, see photo) exposed to three different water regimes over a period of 15 weeks. Curves depict the respective moisture content for TMEs given in % of WHCmax. The horizontal dashed line reflects the moisture content at beginning of the experiment under field conditions (e.g. 65% of WHCmax). (PDF 11 kb)

Supplementary Table S1

Taxonomic and functional assignments of strongly responding OTUs, and references to their putative nutritional modes. (XLSX 18 kb)

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Schmidt, PA., Schmitt, I., Otte, J. et al. Season-Long Experimental Drought Alters Fungal Community Composition but Not Diversity in a Grassland Soil. Microb Ecol 75, 468–478 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-017-1047-2

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