Non-mycorrhizal root associated fungi of a tropical montane forest are relatively robust to the long-term addition of moderate rates of nitrogen and phosphorus

Abstract

Andean forests are biodiversity hotspots and globally important carbon (C) repositories. This status might be at risk due to increasing rates of atmospheric nutrient deposition. As fungal communities are key in the recirculation of soil nutrients, assessing their responses to soil eutrophication can help establish a link between microbial biodiversity and the sustainability of the C sink status of this region. Beyond mycorrhizal fungi, which have been studied more frequently, a wide range of other fungi associate with the fine root fraction of trees. Monitoring these communities can offer insights into how communities composed of both facultative and obligate root associated fungi are responding to soil eutrophication. Here we document the response of non-mycorrhizal root associated fungal (RAF) communities to a long-term nutrient manipulation experiment. The stand level fine root fraction of an old growth tropical montane forest was sampled after seven years of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) additions. RAF communities were characterized by a deep sequencing approach. As per the resource imbalance model, we expected that asymmetries in the availability of C, N and P elicited by fertilization will lead to mean richness reductions and alterations of the community structure. We recovered moderately diverse fungal assemblages composed by sequence variants classified within a wide set of trophic guilds. While mean richness remained stable, community composition shifted, particularly among Ascomycota and after the addition of P. Fertilization factors, however, only accounted for a minor proportion of the variance in community composition. These findings suggest that, unlike mycorrhizal fungi, RAF communities are less sensitive to shifts in soil nutrient availability. A plausible explanation is that non-mycorrhizal RAF have fundamentally different nutrient acquisition and life history traits, thus allowing them greater stoichiometric plasticity and an array of functional acclimation responses that collectively express as subtle shifts in community level attributes.