Shrub range expansion alters diversity and distribution of soil fungal communities across an alpine elevation gradient

Courtney G. Collins, Jason E. Stajich, Sören E. Weber, Nuttapon Pombubpa, Jeffrey M. Diez

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Scopus citations

Abstract

Global climate and land use change are altering plant and soil microbial communities worldwide, particularly in arctic and alpine biomes where warming is accelerated. The widespread expansion of woody shrubs into historically herbaceous alpine plant zones is likely to interact with climate to affect soil microbial community structure and function; however, our understanding of alpine soil ecology remains limited. This study aimed to (i) determine whether the diversity and community composition of soil fungi vary across elevation gradients and to (ii) assess the impact of woody shrub expansion on these patterns. In the White Mountains of California, sagebrush (Artemisia rothrockii) shrubs have been expanding upwards into alpine areas since 1960. In this study, we combined observational field data with a manipulative shrub removal experiment along an elevation transect of alpine shrub expansion. We utilized next-generation sequencing of the ITS1 region for fungi and joint distribution modelling to tease apart effects of the environment and intracommunity interactions on soil fungi. We found that soil fungal diversity declines and community composition changes with increasing elevation. Both abiotic factors (primarily soil moisture and soil organic C) and woody sagebrush range expansion had significant effects on these patterns. However, fungal diversity and relative abundance had high spatial variation, overwhelming the predictive power of vegetation type, elevation and abiotic soil conditions at the landscape scale. Finally, we observed positive and negative associations among fungal taxa which may be important in structuring community responses to global change.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2461-2476
Number of pages16
JournalMolecular Ecology
Volume27
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2018
Externally publishedYes

Funding

We thank Derreck Carter-House for assistance with laboratory analyses and sequencing prep, Christopher Kopp for the use of sagebrush removal plots for soil sampling and Teresa Bohner for statistical advice and feedback on the manuscript. Funding was provided by the University of California Riverside, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology as well as from a White Mountain Research Center minigrant and a graduate fellowship from the University of California’s Institute for the Study of Ecological and Evolutionary Climate Impacts (ISEECI), funded by a Presidential Research Catalyst Award. Fungal ITS primers were made available through the Sloan Built Environment Program and sequencing supported by funds through United States Department of Agriculture—National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project CA-R-PPA-5062-H to Jason Stajich. This work was also supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) Award Number 1701979 to Courtney Collins, and Nuttapon Pombubpa was supported by a Royal Thai government fellowship. National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Grant/Award Number: CA-R-PPA-5062-H; National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: 1701979

Keywords

  • alpine
  • fungi
  • global change
  • joint distribution model
  • shrub expansion
  • soil

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