Ecological succession reveals potential signatures of marine-terrestrial transition in salt marsh fungal communities.

ABSTRACT: Marine-to-terrestrial transition represents one of the most fundamental shifts in microbial life. Understanding the distribution and drivers of soil microbial communities across coastal ecosystems is critical given the roles of microbes in soil biogeochemistry and their multifaceted influence on landscape succession. Here, we studied the fungal community dynamics in a well-established salt marsh chronosequence that spans over a century of ecosystem development. We focussed on providing high-resolution assessments of community composition, diversity and ecophysiological shifts that yielded patterns of ecological succession through soil formation. Notably, despite containing 10- to 100-fold lower fungal internal transcribed spacer abundances, early-successional sites revealed fungal richness

SUBMITTER: Dini-Andreote F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5029165 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature