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Threesomes destabilise certain relationships: multispecies interactions between wood decay fungi in natural resources.

ABSTRACT: Understanding interspecific interactions is key to explaining and modelling community development and associated ecosystem function. Most interactions research has focused on pairwise combinations, overlooking the complexity of multispecies communities. This study investigated three-way interactions between saprotrophic fungi in wood and across soil, and indicated that pairwise combinations are often inaccurate predictors of the outcomes of multispecies competition in wood block interactions. This inconsistency was especially true of intransitive combinations, resulting in increased species coexistence within the resource. Furthermore, the addition of a third competitor frequently destabilised the otherwise consistent outcomes of pairwise combinations in wood blocks, which occasionally resulted in altered resource decomposition rates, depending on the relative decay abilities of the species involved. Conversely, interaction outcomes in soil microcosms were unaffected by the presence of a third combatant. Multispecies interactions promoted species diversity within natural resources, and made community dynamics less consistent than could be predicted from pairwise interaction studies.

SUBMITTER: Hiscox J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5399798 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Threesomes destabilise certain relationships: multispecies interactions between wood decay fungi in natural resources.

Hiscox Jennifer J Savoury Melanie M Toledo Selin S Kingscott-Edmunds James J Bettridge Aimee A Waili Nasra Al NA Boddy Lynne L

FEMS microbiology ecology 20170301 3

Understanding interspecific interactions is key to explaining and modelling community development and associated ecosystem function. Most interactions research has focused on pairwise combinations, overlooking the complexity of multispecies communities. This study investigated three-way interactions between saprotrophic fungi in wood and across soil, and indicated that pairwise combinations are often inaccurate predictors of the outcomes of multispecies competition in wood block interactions. Th ...[more]

PMID: 28175239

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Project description:BackgroundThe majority of wood decomposing fungi are mushroom-forming Agaricomycetes, which exhibit two main modes of plant cell wall decomposition: white rot, in which all plant cell wall components are degraded, including lignin, and brown rot, in which lignin is modified but not appreciably removed. Previous studies suggested that brown rot fungi tend to be specialists of gymnosperm hosts and that brown rot promotes gymnosperm specialization. However, these hypotheses were based on analyses of limited datasets of Agaricomycetes. Overcoming this limitation, we used a phylogeny with 1157 species integrating available sequences, assembled decay mode characters from the literature, and coded host specialization using the newly developed R package, rusda.ResultsWe found that most brown rot fungi are generalists or gymnosperm specialists, whereas most white rot fungi are angiosperm specialists. A six-state model of the evolution of host specialization revealed high transition rates between generalism and specialization in both decay modes. However, while white rot lineages switched most frequently to angiosperm specialists, brown rot lineages switched most frequently to generalism. A time-calibrated phylogeny revealed that Agaricomycetes is older than the flowering plants but many of the large clades originated after the diversification of the angiosperms in the Cretaceous.ConclusionsOur results challenge the current view that brown rot fungi are primarily gymnosperm specialists and reveal intensive white rot specialization to angiosperm hosts. We thus suggest that brown rot associated convergent loss of lignocellulose degrading enzymes was correlated with host generalism, rather than gymnosperm specialism. A likelihood model of host specialization evolution together with a time-calibrated phylogeny further suggests that the rise of the angiosperms opened a new mega-niche for wood-decay fungi, which was exploited particularly well by white rot lineages.

Dataset Information

Threesomes destabilise certain relationships: multispecies interactions between wood decay fungi in natural resources.

Publications

Threesomes destabilise certain relationships: multispecies interactions between wood decay fungi in natural resources.

Similar Datasets

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