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. 2021 Apr 20:12:655987.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.655987. eCollection 2021.

Exploring Trait Trade-Offs for Fungal Decomposers in a Southern California Grassland

Charlotte J Alster  1 , Steven D Allison  1   2 , Sydney I Glassman  1   3 , Adam C Martiny  1   2 , Kathleen K Treseder  1
Affiliations

Exploring Trait Trade-Offs for Fungal Decomposers in a Southern California Grassland

Charlotte J Alster et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Fungi are important decomposers in terrestrial ecosystems, so their responses to climate change might influence carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics. We investigated whether growth and activity of fungi under drought conditions were structured by trade-offs among traits in 15 fungal isolates from a Mediterranean Southern California grassland. We inoculated fungi onto sterilized litter that was incubated at three moisture levels (4, 27, and 50% water holding capacity, WHC). For each isolate, we characterized traits that described three potential lifestyles within the newly proposed "YAS" framework: growth yield, resource acquisition, and stress tolerance. Specifically, we measured fungal hyphal length per unit litter decomposition for growth yield; the potential activities of the extracellular enzymes cellobiohydrolase (CBH), β -glucosidase (BG), β -xylosidase (BX), and N-acetyl- β - D -glucosaminidase (NAG) for resource acquisition; and ability to grow in drought vs. higher moisture levels for drought stress tolerance. Although, we had hypothesized that evolutionary and physiological trade-offs would elicit negative relationships among traits, we found no supporting evidence for this hypothesis. Across isolates, growth yield, drought stress tolerance, and extracellular enzyme activities were not significantly related to each other. Thus, it is possible that drought-induced shifts in fungal community composition may not necessarily lead to changes in fungal biomass or decomposer ability in this arid grassland.

Keywords: YAS framework; drought; extracellular enzymes; fungal traits; litter decomposition.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Growth yield for each isolate and their relationship to incubation moisture level. Each line represents one isolate. Symbols are means ± 1SE of two replicates. Bars are averages of all isolates.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Correlations between moisture association index (MAI), growth yield, and extracellular enzyme activities of fungal isolates. Each point represents one fungal isolate (mean of two sampling replicates). Colors represent moisture level. p-values are for relationships between traits across all samples, with moisture as a covariate and phylum, class, order, family, and genus as nested random factors. Correlations between the ranked growth yield data and the other traits can be found in Supplementary Figure S4.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Relationships between extracellular enzyme activities of fungal isolates. Each point represents one fungal isolate (mean of two sampling replicates). Colors represent moisture level. p-values are for relationships between traits across all samples, with moisture as a covariate and phylum, class, order, family, and genus as nested random factors. Lines are best fit for significant relationships.
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