Intensive tropical land use massively shifts soil fungal communities.

ABSTRACT: Soil fungi are key players in nutrient cycles as decomposers, mutualists and pathogens, but the impact of tropical rain forest transformation into rubber or oil palm plantations on fungal community structures and their ecological functions are unknown. We hypothesized that increasing land use intensity and habitat loss due to the replacement of the hyperdiverse forest flora by nonendemic cash crops drives a drastic loss of diversity of soil fungal taxa and impairs the ecological soil functions. Unexpectedly, rain forest conversion was not associated with strong diversity loss but with massive shifts in soil fungal community composition. Fungal communities clustered according to land use system and loss of plant species. Network analysis revealed characteristic fungal genera significantly a

SUBMITTER: Brinkmann N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6399230 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature