Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale.

Forest soils harbor hyper-diverse microbial communities which fundamentally regulate carbon and nutrient cycling across the globe. Directly testing hypotheses on how microbiome diversity is linked to forest carbon storage has been difficult, due to a lack of paired data on microbiome diversity and in situ observations of forest carbon accumulation and storage. Here, we investigated the relationship between soil microbiomes and forest carbon across 238 forest inventory plots spanning 15 European countries. We show that the composition and diversity of fungal, but not bacterial, species is tightly coupled to both forest biotic conditions and a seven-fold variation in tree growth rates and biomass carbon stocks when controlling for the effects of dominant tree type, climate, and other environmental factors. This linkage is particularly strong for symbiotic endophytic and ectomycorrhizal fungi known to directly facilitate tree growth. Since tree growth rates in this system are closely and positively correlated with belowground soil carbon stocks, we conclude that fungal composition is a strong predictor of overall forest carbon storage across the European continent.

Enumerating soil biodiversity.

Soil is an immense habitat for diverse organisms across the tree of life, but just how many organisms live in soil is surprisingly unknown. Previous efforts to enumerate soil biodiversity consider only certain types of organisms (e.g., animals) or report values for diverse groups without partitioning species that live in soil versus other habitats. Here, we reviewed the biodiversity literature to show that soil is likely home to 59 ± 15% of the species on Earth. We therefore estimate an approximately two times greater soil biodiversity than previous estimates, and we include representatives from the simplest (microbial) to most complex (mammals) organisms. Enchytraeidae have the greatest percentage of species in soil (98.6%), followed by fungi (90%), Plantae (85.5%), and Isoptera (84.2%). Our results demonstrate that soil is the most biodiverse singular habitat. By using this estimate of soil biodiversity, we can more accurately and quantitatively advocate for soil organismal conservation and restoration as a central goal of the Anthropocene.

Wind and small mammals are complementary fungal dispersers.

Following a disturbance, dispersal shapes community composition as well as ecosystem structure and function. For fungi, dispersal is often wind or mammal facilitated, but it is unclear whether these pathways are complementary or redundant in the taxa they disperse and the ecosystem functions they provide. Here, we compare the diversity and morphology of fungi dispersed by wind and three rodent species in recently harvested forests using a combination of microscopy and Illumina sequencing. We demonstrate that fungal communities dispersed by wind and small mammals differ in richness and composition. Most wind-dispersed fungi are wood saprotrophs, litter saprotrophs, and plant pathogens, whereas fungi dispersed in mammal scat are primarily mycorrhizal, soil saprotrophs, and unspecified saprotrophs. We note substantial dispersal of truffles and agaricoid mushrooms by small mammals, and dispersal of agaricoid mushrooms, crusts, and polypores by wind. In addition, we find mammal-dispersed spores are larger than wind-dispersed spores. Our findings suggest that wind- and small-mammal-facilitated dispersal are complementary processes and highlight the role of small mammals in dispersing mycorrhizal fungi, particularly following disturbances such as timber harvest.

Defending Earth's terrestrial microbiome.

Microbial life represents the majority of Earth's biodiversity. Across disparate disciplines from medicine to forestry, scientists continue to discover how the microbiome drives essential, macro-scale processes in plants, animals and entire ecosystems. Yet, there is an emerging realization that Earth's microbial biodiversity is under threat. Here we advocate for the conservation and restoration of soil microbial life, as well as active incorporation of microbial biodiversity into managed food and forest landscapes, with an emphasis on soil fungi. We analyse 80 experiments to show that native soil microbiome restoration can accelerate plant biomass production by 64% on average, across ecosystems. Enormous potential also exists within managed landscapes, as agriculture and forestry are the dominant uses of land on Earth. Along with improving and stabilizing yields, enhancing microbial biodiversity in managed landscapes is a critical and underappreciated opportunity to build reservoirs, rather than deserts, of microbial life across our planet. As markets emerge to engineer the ecosystem microbiome, we can avert the mistakes of aboveground ecosystem management and avoid microbial monocultures of single high-performing microbial strains, which can exacerbate ecosystem vulnerability to pathogens and extreme events. Harnessing the planet's breadth of microbial life has the potential to transform ecosystem management, but it requires that we understand how to monitor and conserve the Earth's microbiome.

Forest tree growth is linked to mycorrhizal fungal composition and function across Europe.

Most trees form symbioses with ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) which influence access to growth-limiting soil resources. Mesocosm experiments repeatedly show that EMF species differentially affect plant development, yet whether these effects ripple up to influence the growth of entire forests remains unknown. Here we tested the effects of EMF composition and functional genes relative to variation in well-known drivers of tree growth by combining paired molecular EMF surveys with high-resolution forest inventory data across 15 European countries. We show that EMF composition was linked to a three-fold difference in tree growth rate even when controlling for the primary abiotic drivers of tree growth. Fast tree growth was associated with EMF communities harboring high inorganic but low organic nitrogen acquisition gene proportions and EMF which form contact versus medium-distance fringe exploration types. These findings suggest that EMF composition is a strong bio-indicator of underlying drivers of tree growth and/or that variation of forest EMF communities causes differences in tree growth. While it may be too early to assign causality or directionality, our study is one of the first to link fine-scale variation within a key component of the forest microbiome to ecosystem functioning at a continental scale.

Fungal community structure and function shifts with atmospheric nitrogen deposition.

Fungal decomposition of soil organic matter depends on soil nitrogen (N) availability. This ecosystem process is being jeopardized by changes in N inputs that have resulted from a tripling of atmospheric N deposition in the last century. Soil fungi are impacted by atmospheric N deposition due to higher N availability, as soils are acidified, or as micronutrients become increasingly limiting. Fungal communities that persist with chronic N deposition may be enriched with traits that enable them to tolerate environmental stress, which may trade-off with traits enabling organic matter decomposition. We hypothesized that fungal communities would respond to N deposition by shifting community composition and functional gene abundances toward those that tolerate stress but are weak decomposers. We sampled soils at seven eastern US hardwood forests where ambient N deposition varied from 3.2 to 12.6 kg N ha-1  year-1 , five of which also have experimental plots where atmospheric N deposition was simulated through fertilizer application treatments (25-50 kg N ha-1  year-1 ). Fungal community and functional responses to fertilizer varied across the ambient N deposition gradient. Fungal biomass and richness increased with simulated N deposition at sites with low ambient deposition and decreased at sites with high ambient deposition. Fungal functional genes involved in hydrolysis of organic matter increased with ambient N deposition while genes involved in oxidation of organic matter decreased. One of four genes involved in generalized abiotic stress tolerance increased with ambient N deposition. In summary, we found that the divergent response to simulated N deposition depended on ambient N deposition levels. Fungal biomass, richness, and oxidative enzyme potential were reduced by N deposition where ambient N deposition was high suggesting fungal communities were pushed beyond an environmental stress threshold. Fungal community structure and function responses to N enrichment depended on ambient N deposition at a regional scale.