title: Disentangling the relative importance of host tree community, abiotic environment and spatial factors on ectomycorrhizal fungal assemblages along an elevation gradient.
abstract: Recent studies have shown that changes in community compositions of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi along elevation gradients are mainly affected by changes in host tree communities and/or in abiotic environments. However, few studies have taken the effects of processes related to fungal dispersal (i.e. spatial processes) into account and distinguished the effects of host community, abiotic environment and spatial processes on community composition along elevation gradients. This has left unclear the relative importance of these factors in structuring the ECM community assemblages. To address this, we investigated the community composition of ECM fungi along an elevation gradient in northern Japan with 454 meta-barcoding. We found that the community composition of ECM fungi changed along the elevation and that all three factors jointly affected the compositional changes. We separated the magnitude of importance of the three factors in structuring ECM fungal communities and found that most of the spatial variation in ECM fungal community was explained by host communities and abiotic environments. Our results suggest that while biotic and/or abiotic environments can be important factors in determining the ECM fungal community composition along an elevation gradient, spatial processes may also be a primary determinant.
authors.affiliation: Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Shiga 520-2153, Japan smatsuoka@ecology.kyoto-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Shunsuke
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Matsuoka
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Kanagawa 240-0067, Japan.
authors.forename: Akira S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Mori
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan.
authors.forename: Eri
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kawaguchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Symbiotic Science, Rakuno Gakuen University, Hokkaido 069-0836, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hobara
authors.affiliation: Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Shiga 520-2153, Japan.
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Osono
mesh_terms: D000531:Altitude; D044822:Biodiversity; D007564:Japan; D038821:Mycorrhizae / Q000145:classification* / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000502:physiology; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D014197:Trees / Q000145:classification / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000502:physiology
keywords: assembly process; ectomycorrhiza; environmental gradient; fungal community; pyrosequencing; spatial structure