Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Dec;203(10):6303-6314.
doi: 10.1007/s00203-021-02598-8. Epub 2021 Oct 15.

Truffle species strongly shape their surrounding soil mycobiota in a Pinus armandii forest

Dong Liu  1 , Mariana Herrera  2 , Peng Zhang  2 , Xinhua He  2   3 , Jesús Perez-Moreno  4 , Caspar C C Chater  5 , Fuqiang Yu  6
Affiliations

Truffle species strongly shape their surrounding soil mycobiota in a Pinus armandii forest

Dong Liu et al. Arch Microbiol. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

Truffles contribute to crucial soil systems dynamics, being involved in plentiful ecological functions important for ecosystems. Despite this, the interactions between truffles and their surrounding mycobiome remain unknown. Here, we investigate soil mycobiome differences between two truffle species, Tuber indicum (Ti) and Tuber pseudohimalayense (Tp), and their relative influence on surrounding soil mycobiota. Using traditional chemical analysis and ITS Illumina sequencing, we compared soil nutrients and the mycobiota, respectively, in soil, gleba, and peridium of the two truffle species inhabiting the same Pinus armandii forest in southwestern China. Tp soil was more acidic (pH 6.42) and had a higher nutrient content (total C, N content) than Ti soil (pH 6.62). Fungal richness and diversity of fruiting bodies (ascomata) and surrounding soils were significantly higher in Tp than in Ti. Truffle species recruited unique soil mycobiota around their ascomata: in Ti soil, fungal taxa, including Suillus, Alternaria, Phacidium, Mycosphaerella, Halokirschsteiniothelia, and Pseudogymnoascus, were abundant, while in Tp soil species of Melanophyllum, Inocybe, Rhizopogon, Rhacidium, and Lecanicillium showed higher abundances. Three dissimilarity tests, including adonis, anosim, and MRPP, showed that differences in fungal community structure between the two truffle species and their surrounding soils were stronger in Tp than in Ti, and these differences extended to truffle tissues (peridium and gleba). Redundancy analysis (RDA) further demonstrated that correlations between soil fungal taxa and soil properties changed from negative (Tp) to positive (Ti) and shifted from a moisture-driven (Tp) to a total N-driven (Ti) relationship. Overall, our results shed light on the influence that truffles have on their surrounding soil mycobiome. However, further studies are required on a broader range of truffle species in different soil conditions in order to determine causal relationships between truffles and their soil mycobiome.

Keywords: Fungal community; Hypogeous ectomycorrhizal fungi; Mycobiota; Soil nutrient; Truffles.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Barbieri E, Ceccaroli P, Agostini D et al (2016) Truffle-associated bacteria: extrapolation from diversity to function. In: Zambonelli A, Iotti M, Murat C (eds) True truffle (Tuber spp.) in the world soil ecology, systematics and biochemistry. Springer US, pp 301–317 - DOI
    1. Benucci GMN, Bonito GM (2016) The truffle microbiome: species and geography effects on bacteria associated with fruiting bodies of hypogeous pezizales. Microb Ecol 72:4–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0755-3 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bonito GM, Gryganskyi AP, Trappe JM, Vilgalys R (2010) A global meta-analysis of Tuber ITS rDNA sequences: species diversity, host associations and long-distance dispersal. Mol Ecol 19:4994–5008. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04855.x - DOI - PubMed
    1. Clarke KR (1993) Non-parametric multivariate analyses of changes in community structure. Austral Ecol 18:117–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-9993.1993.tb00438.x - DOI
    1. De Miguel AM, Águeda B, Sánchez S, Parladé J (2014) Ectomycorrhizal fungus diversity and community structure with natural and cultivated truffle hosts: applying lessons learned to future truffle culture. Mycorrhiza 24:5–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-013-0554-3 - DOI

Supplementary concepts

LinkOut - more resources