Plant diversity significantly impacts ecosystem processes and functions, yet its influence on the community assembly of leaf fungi remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated leaf epiphytic and endophytic fungal communities in a Chinese subtropical tree species richness experiment, ranging from 1 to 16 species, using amplicon sequencing to target the internal transcribed spacer 1 region of the rDNA. We found that the community assembly of epiphytic and endophytic fungi was predominantly governed by stochastic processes, with a higher contribution of dispersal limitation on epiphytic than on endophytic fungal communities but a higher contribution of selection on endophytic than on epiphytic fungal communities. The plant-epiphytic fungus interaction network was more complex (e.g., more highly connected and strongly nested but less specialized and modularized) than the plant-endophytic fungus interaction network. Additionally, tree species richness was positively correlated with the network complexity and diversity of epiphytic (α-, β- and γ-diversity) and endophytic (β- and γ-diversity) fungi, but was not associated with the contribution of the stochastic and deterministic processes on the community assembly of epiphytic and endophytic fungi. This study highlights that tree species diversity enhances the diversity and network complexity, rather than alters the ecological processes in community assembly of leaf-associated fungi.
Figure 1. Community assembly of epiphytic and endophytic fungi at each plant species richness level.
Figure 2. Linear relationship between the epiphytic and endophytic fungal diversity and tree species richness.
Figure 3. PCoA of the community composition of epiphytic and endophytic fungi.
Figure 4. Variation partitioning analysis showing the pure and shared effects of plant and spatial variables on the community composition (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) of epiphytic (A) and endophytic (B) fungi.
Figure 5. SEMs showing the hypothesized relationships between tree species richness, tree identity, neighbor tree species richness, ecological process indicators, and fungal α-, βand γ-diversity.
Figure 6. Structure of plant-epiphytic and endophytic fungus networks.
Literature:
Jie Li*, Xing-Chun Li, Hui-Yun Gan, Yue Zhang, Zi-Xuan Guo, Yu-Xuan Liu, Yong-Qing Lin, Liang-Dong Guo*. 2024. Plant diversity increases diversity and network complexity rather than alters community assembly processes of leaf-associated fungi in a subtropical forest. SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences. Online. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11427-024-2630-6
Chinese report: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QGpaXRPf9SnWXD6OY53CMA
