Rapid incorporation of carbon from ectomycorrhizal mycelial necromass into soil fungal communities

By B. Drigo, I. Anderson, G. Kannangara, Johnw. G. Cairney, David W. Johnson. 2012

99 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ectomycorrhizal mycelial necromass is an important source of carbon for free-living microorganisms in forest soils, yet we know little either of its fate when it enters soil or of the identity of microbes that are able to utilise mycelium as their energy source. Here we used 13C-labelled mycelium of the ectomycorrhizal fungus Pisolithus microcarpus in laboratory incubations in combination with DNA-stable isotope probing (SIP) to determine the identity of functionally active soil fungi that can utilise dead mycelium. We also used solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to detect parallel changes in the abundance of key biochemical constituents of soil. A decrease in bulk soil 13C concentration together with rapid loss of glycogen and chitin-glucan during the 4 week incubations suggested that dead mycelium was rapidly turned over. Further, 13C was incorporated into fungal DNA within 7 days of addition to soil. DNA-SIP also revealed a dynamic community of functionally active soil fungi. By applying DNA-SIP and NMR in parallel, our data show that carbon from decaying ectomycorrhizal mycelium is rapidly transformed and incorporated into free-living soil fungi. This finding emphasises that dead extra-matrical mycelium is an important source of labile carbon for soil microorganisms.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cea0d7f5008769373f297e55c9f6a799be1fb0e3

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Citations in the corpus

The decomposition of ectomycorrhizal fungal necromass (2016, methodology): “Thus far, much of the research focused on fungal necromass decomposition has used lab grown fungal biomass and either used to inoculate soil microcosms (i.e. Wilkinson et al., 2011; Drigo et al., 2012) or used in a litterbag approach (i.”
Melanization of mycorrhizal fungal necromass structures microbial decomposer communities (2018, result): “This result, which was largely consistent between sites, suggests that this fungal guild may play a more central role in the turnover of fungal necromass than previously recognized (Baldrian, 2017; Brabcová et al., 2016; Drigo et al., 2012).”
Initial melanin and nitrogen concentrations control the decomposition of ectomycorrhizal fungal litter (2014, background): “However, there is growing evidence suggesting that chitin is relatively labile (Fernandez and Koide, 2012; Drigo et al., 2012; Zeglin et al., 2013).”
Evaluation of methods to estimate production, biomass and turnover of ectomycorrhizal mycelium in forests soils : A review (2013, background): “, 2000) in which ECM fungal hyphae is enriched in 13C has recently been used to demonstrate the rapidity of C incorporation into freeliving soil fungi via this pathway (Drigo et al., 2012).”