Many studies have provided compelling evidence for the diversity-promoting effects of soil fungi in a wide range of forests. However, the factors determine plant-fungi interactions remain unclear. By combining plant functional traits and snapshot fungal community (high throughput sequencing), we address how host tree functional traits (i.e., root traits), soil properties and neighborhood identity affects community composition of various guilds of soil fungi in a subtropical forest.
Results/Conclusions
We show that fungal community dissimilarity was significantly correlated to belowground functional traits (i.e., first order root diameter), soil nutrients (i.e., N and P) and tree neighborhood identity (i.e., conspecfic and EcM neighbor density). In addition, we also find the average fungal pathogenic OTU specificity increase with host tree DBH size. This study highlights the importance of belowground functional traits in mediating plant-fungi interactions, and adds to a mechanistic understanding of species coexistence in natural forests.