Article
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Changes in Soil Fungal Diversity and Composition along a Rural–Urban Gradient
Version 1
: Received: 17 September 2023 / Approved: 18 September 2023 / Online: 19 September 2023 (03:50:33 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Rusterholz, H.-P.; Baur, B. Changes in Soil Fungal Diversity and Composition along a Rural–Urban Gradient. Forests 2023, 14, 2226. Rusterholz, H.-P.; Baur, B. Changes in Soil Fungal Diversity and Composition along a Rural–Urban Gradient. Forests 2023, 14, 2226.
Abstract
The functioning of forest ecosystems depends on the taxonomic and ecological diversity of soil fungi. Urbanization is increasing worldwide and is regarded a major driver of environmental change altering local species assemblages in urban forest. We investigated whether the degree of urbanization and local forest characteristics affect the soil fungal community in 20 beech forests located along a rural–urban gradient in the city of Basel and its suburbs (Switzerland). We analyzed their soil fungal communities by DNA metabarcoding of the rDNA ITS2 region and related these data to local forest vegetation characteristics and soil properties. The number of fungal OTUs in the 20 forests examined ranged from 170 to 303. Richness, diversity and evenness of fungal OTUs were all significantly affected by the degree of urbanization, but in different ways. OTU richness was highest in forests in areas with a low degree of urbanization and lowest in forests in rural areas. In contrast, the diversity of OTUs increased with increasing degree of urbanization. Different fungal phyla and fungal guilds showed distinct patterns in their relative abundance along the rural-urban gradient. The degree of urbanization reduced the relative abundance of symbiotrophic fungi, but increased that of saprotrophic and pathotrophic fungi. Our results show that urbanization alters soil fungal community, which in turn can lead to changes in forest ecosystems.
Keywords
urbanization; soil microbial community; beech forest; forest characteristics; trophic groups; fungal guilds
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Forestry
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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