LAND-USE TYPES ALTER THE FUNGAL COMMUNITY COMPOSITION IN A SUBTROPICAL MOUNTAINOUS REGION OF SOUTHWEST CHINA

Little is known about the response of the soil fungi community to land use change in a subtropical mountainous region. In this study, four land-use types (afforestation land, FL; abandoned land, SL; native grassland, GL; cultivated land, CL) were selected to investigate the diversity and composition of fungal communities using Illumina Miseq high-throughput sequencing in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of southwest China. The results indicated that the dominant fungal phyla were always Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. Land-use type significantly altered the diversity and composition of soil fungal communities. At the phyla level, the relative abundances of Glomeromycota, Ciliophora, Chytridiomycota and Chlorophyta presented as being significantly higher in CL than in other land-use types (p<0.05), whereas the relative abundance of Rozellomycota showed higher in SL than in other land-use types (p<0.05); At the class level, higher the relative abundance of Leotiomycetes in SL, Dothideomycetes in GL, Sordariomycetes in CL than in other land-use types were detected; At the genus level, higher the relative abundances of Tricholoma and Sebacina in FL, Leohumicola in GL, Mortierella in CL than in other land-use types were detected. Moreover, pearson correlation and RDA analyses revealed that the fungal communities were primarily regulated by soil physicochemical properties. These findings suggested that land use acts as a major driver with respect to physicochemical factors in shaping the composition of soil fungal communities in the subtropical mountainous region of southwest China.