title: Towards global patterns in the diversity and community structure of ectomycorrhizal fungi.
abstract: Global species richness patterns of soil micro-organisms remain poorly understood compared to macro-organisms. We use a global analysis to disentangle the global determinants of diversity and community composition for ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi-microbial symbionts that play key roles in plant nutrition in most temperate and many tropical forest ecosystems. Host plant family has the strongest effect on the phylogenetic community composition of fungi, whereas temperature and precipitation mostly affect EcM fungal richness that peaks in the temperate and boreal forest biomes, contrasting with latitudinal patterns of macro-organisms. Tropical ecosystems experience rapid turnover of organic material and have weak soil stratification, suggesting that poor habitat conditions may contribute to the relatively low richness of EcM fungi, and perhaps other soil biota, in most tropical ecosystems. For EcM fungi, greater evolutionary age and larger total area of EcM host vegetation may also contribute to the higher diversity in temperate ecosystems. Our results provide useful biogeographic and ecological hypotheses for explaining the distribution of fungi that remain to be tested by involving next-generation sequencing techniques and relevant soil metadata.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, Tartu University, 14A Ravila, 50411 Tartu, Estonia. leho.tedersoo@ut.ee
authors.forename: Leho
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tedersoo
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bahram
authors.forename: Märt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Toots
authors.forename: Abdala G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Diédhiou
authors.forename: Terry W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Henkel
authors.forename: Rasmus
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kjøller
authors.forename: Melissa H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.forename: Kazuhide
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nara
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nouhra
authors.forename: Kabir G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Peay
authors.forename: Sergei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Põlme
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ryberg
authors.forename: Matthew E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Urmas
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Kõljalg
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002980:Climate; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer / Q000235:genetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D038821:Mycorrhizae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development*; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000382:microbiology; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer