title: Soil fungal community development in a high Arctic glacier foreland follows a directional replacement model, with a mid-successional diversity maximum.
abstract: Directional replacement and directional non-replacement models are two alternative paradigms for community development in primary successional environments. The first model emphasizes turnover in species between early and late successional niches. The second emphasizes accumulation of additional diversity over time. To test whether the development of soil fungal communities in the foreland of an Arctic glacier conforms to either of these models, we collected samples from the Midtre Lovénbreen Glacier, Svalbard, along a soil successional series spanning >80 years. Soil DNA was extracted, and fungal ITS1 region was amplified and sequenced on an Illumina Miseq. There was a progressive change in community composition in the soil fungal community, with greatest fungal OTU richness in the Mid Stage (50-80 years). A nestedness analysis showed that the Early Stage (20-50 years) and the Late Stage (>80 years) fungal communities were nested within the Mid Stage communities. These results imply that fungal community development in this glacier succession follows a directional replacement model. Soil development processes may initially be important in facilitating arrival of additional fungal species, to give a mid-successional diversity maximum that contains both early- and late-successional fungi. Competition may then decrease the overall diversity due to the loss of early successional species.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.|Arctic Research Centre, Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, 21990, South Korea.
authors.forename: Binu
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tripathi
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.|Division of Life Sciences, School of Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, 999077, Hong Kong.|Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, 531 boulevard de Prairies, Laval, Quebec, H7V 1B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Itumeleng
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Moroenyane
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.
authors.forename: Woosung
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: School of the Environment, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL, 32307, USA.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, East Beijing Road 71, Nanjing 210008 China.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Adams