Fungal community responses to discrete precipitation pulses under altered rainfall intervals
A. JUMPPONEN (1), L. Zeglin (2), M. David (3), E. Prestat (3), S. Brown (1), J. Dvornik (3), K. Lothamer (1), R. Hettich (4), J. Jansson (3), C. W. Rice (1), S. Tringe (5), D. Myrold (2). (1) Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, U.S.A.; (2) Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, U.S.A.; (3) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.; (4) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, U.S.A.; (5) Joint Genome Institute,
Climate models for central United States predict greater variability in precipitation with likely impacts ecosystem properties. We analyzed soil fungal biomass and communities in the long-term Rainfall Manipulation Plots (RaMPs) experiment before, 1 day, and 5 days after scheduled rainfall in June and September, 2011. RaMPs experiment includes ambient – precipitation distributed following a rain event – and increased interval treatments – accumulated water distributed at 50% greater intervals. As the RaMPs permit scheduled, discrete precipitation events, it served perfectly to focus on long- and short-term dynamics in soil. Our data show that the communities responded to pulses and that these responses were more pronounced in the extended interval treatment: fungal biomass increased within 5 days post-pulse, but only early growing season when adequate moisture was available. The biomass responses corroborate community richness and diversity, which decline in response to the pulse. The latter seem counterintuitive, but indicate detection of a greater number of copies of dominant, responsive OTUs. Biomass, richness, and diversity were dynamic, whereas the composition overall was stable through the pulse. Our data highlight the rapid community dynamics and the context dependency of fungal responses to pulse events.
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