title: Unravelling soil fungal communities from different Mediterranean land-use backgrounds.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Fungi strongly influence ecosystem structure and functioning, playing a key role in many ecological services as decomposers, plant mutualists and pathogens. The Mediterranean area is a biodiversity hotspot that is increasingly threatened by intense land use. Therefore, to achieve a balance between conservation and human development, a better understanding of the impact of land use on the underlying fungal communities is needed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We used parallel pyrosequencing of the nuclear ribosomal its regions to characterize the fungal communities in five soils subjected to different anthropogenic impact in a typical mediterranean landscape: a natural cork-oak forest, a pasture, a managed meadow, and two vineyards. Marked differences in the distribution of taxon assemblages among the different sites and communities were found. Data analyses consistently indicated a sharp distinction of the fungal community of the cork oak forest soil from those described in the other soils. Each soil showed features of the fungal assemblages retrieved which can be easily related to the above-ground settings: ectomycorrhizal phylotypes were numerous in natural sites covered by trees, but were nearly completely missing from the anthropogenic and grass-covered sites; similarly, coprophilous fungi were common in grazed sites.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Data suggest that investigation on the below-ground fungal community may provide useful elements on the above-ground features such as vegetation coverage and agronomic procedures, allowing to assess the cost of anthropogenic land use to hidden diversity in soil. Datasets provided in this study may contribute to future searches for fungal bio-indicators as biodiversity markers of a specific site or a land-use degree.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Science and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Orgiazzi
authors.forename: Erica
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lumini
authors.forename: R Henrik
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Nilsson
authors.forename: Mariangela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Girlanda
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vizzini
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bonfante
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bianciotto
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer / Q000235:genetics; D017753:Ecosystem; D005658:Fungi / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D058889:Molecular Typing; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D016533:Mycological Typing Techniques; D010802:Phylogeny; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer