The Contribution of DNA Metabarcoding to Fungal Conservation: Diversity Assessment, Habitat Partitioning and Mapping Red-Listed Fungi in Protected Coastal Salix repens Communities in the Netherlands

摘要: Western European coastal sand dunes are highly important for nature conservation. Communities of the creeping willow (Salix repens) represent one most characteristic and diverse vegetation types in dunes. We report here results first kingdom-wide fungal diversity assessment S. repens dune vegetation. carried out massively parallel pyrosequencing ITS rDNA from soil samples taken at ten sites an extended area joined reserves located along North Sea coast Netherlands, representing habitats with varying pH moisture levels. Fungal communities Salix beds we detected 1211 non-singleton 97% sequence similarity OTUs after analyzing 688,434 ITS2 sequences. Our comparison a north-south transect indicated strong correlation between community composition. The total richness number taxonomic groups negatively correlated higher pH, some exceptions. With regard to ecological groups, dark-septate endophytic fungi were more acidic soils, ectomycorrhizal represented by calcareous sites, while arbuscular mycorrhizal genera showed opposing trends regarding pH. Furthermore, numerous red listed species our often previously unknown locations, indicating that currently considered rare may be abundant Dutch than thought.