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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Cereal Disease Lab » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #302067

Title: Soil fungal communities respond to grassland plant community richness and soil edaphics

Author
item LEBLANC, NICHOLAS - University Of Minnesota
item KINKEL, LINDA - University Of Minnesota
item Kistler, Harold

Submitted to: Microbial Ecology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/6/2014
Publication Date: 11/3/2014
Citation: Leblanc, N., Kinkel, L.L., Kistler, H.C. 2014. Soil fungal communities respond to grassland plant community richness and soil edaphics. Microbial Ecology. doi: 10.1007s00248-014-0531-1.

Interpretive Summary: While historically, plant pathologists have focused on understanding fungi that cause disease in plants, many fungi are known to be helpful to plant health and vigor. However, little is known about the overall composition of fungi inhabiting the soil or growing endophytically within healthy plants. Many fungal species grow slowly, lack readily distinguishable traits and /or are recalcitrant to isolation in pure culture and so only a fraction of fungal species have been described even from well-studied agricultural plants and soils. This study uses high thoroughput DNA sequencing to characterize the fungi associated with soil at the base of four plant species. These plant species were grown alone, simulating agricultural monoculture, or together with several other species, simulating more natural grassland environments. Both the indivdual plant species as well as the plant context (monoculture versus "polyculture") greatly influences the types and diversity of fungi that exist in these plant associated soils. These observations likely will influence thinking and planning of cropping systems arising from agricultural monoculture and intercropping and their impact on fungal soil communities and plant health. The primary users of the research in this publication will be other scientists engaged in research to improve disease management on small grain crops.

Technical Abstract: Fungal communities in soil have significant influences on terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, yet our understanding of the drivers of fungal diversity and community structure in soil is limited. Fungal communities associated with the rhizosphere of four native perennial grassland plant species grown in monoculture and in the presence of other plant species (polyculture) in a long-term field experiment were characterized. Reference databases were developed for, and amplicon libraries sequenced from multiple copy rRNA and single copy RPB2 loci. Clustering and alignment-based pipelines were utilized to evaluate differences in fungal community structure and diversity in response to plant hosts, plant community richness, and soil edaphics. Fungal diversity and the relative abundance of sequences assigned to some taxa, including Phoma, Exophiala, and Lachnum, increased in the rhizosphere of plants growing in polyculture plant communities as compared to monoculture plant communities. The relative abundances of sequences assigned to many of these same taxa were also correlated with measured soil edaphics. Fungal community composition also varied between legumes and grasses growing in monoculture. Using the RPB2 locus to increase phylogenetic resolution, it was possible to exclude a large part of the fungal community to enrich for fungi in the genus Fusarium. Where comparisons were feasible, results obtained from alignment-based and clustering (i.e. OTU) methods were consistent in the response of fungal richness to plant richness and shifts in fungal community structure. These data show that fungal community richness and structure are strongly linked with plant community dynamics and associated soil edaphic characteristics in these grassland soils.