From individual leaves to forest stands: importance of niche, distance decay, and stochasticity vary by ecosystem type and functional group for fungal community composition.

ABSTRACT: Community assembly is influenced by environmental niche processes as well as stochastic processes that can be spatially dependent (e.g. dispersal limitation) or independent (e.g. priority effects). Here, we sampled senesced tree leaves as unit habitats to investigate fungal community assembly at two spatial scales: (i) small neighborhoods of overlapping leaves from differing tree species and (ii) forest stands of differing ecosystem types. Among forest stands, ecosystem type explained the most variation in community composition. Among adjacent leaves within stands, variability in fungal composition was surprisingly high. Leaf type was more important in stands with high soil fertility and dominated by differing tree mycorrhizal types (sugar maple vs. basswood or red oak), whereas distance d

SUBMITTER: Gacura MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10913062 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature