Global Fungi + Climate Change
An opportunity to collaborate
The impacts of climate change are increasingly threatening terrestrial ecosystems. Understanding how this will influence fungal communities is one of the most consequential domains of climate change research because fungal functions, like decomposition and mycorrhizal symbiosis, feedback to influence climate change. Here, we announce an open invitation for collaboration* with researchers across the globe studying terrestrial ecosystem responses to climate change. In particular, we invite submissions of soil or DNA extracts isolated from climate change field experiments for detailed characterization of fungal community structure using full-length ITS DNA metabarcoding and a novel probe capture and enrichment next generation sequencing technique to quantify fungal functional genes involved in oxidative and hydrolytic enzyme biosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, organic and inorganic nitrogen cycling, phosphorus acquisition, stress tolerance, and mycorrhizal symbiosis.
*By contributing samples, supporting analyses, and helping to draft manuscripts, co-authorship will be offered to all collaborators.
MASTER AIM
Identify consistent principals for how fungi respond to climate change at the global scale, enabling us to more accurately forecast the impacts of climate change on global biogeochemistry.
SPECIFIC AIMS
[1] By employing identical methods, can we identify the most vulnerable (responsive) taxa, functional guilds and genes, and traits most responsive to climate change stressors at a global scale?
[2] Are there particular environmental variables (e.g. mean annual temperature) linked to the sensitivity of the soil mycobiome to climate change at a global scale?
[3] By employing identical methods, can we identify if there are particular elements of climate change that most strongly affect the mycobiome (e.g. drought) at a global scale?
[4] Are changes in the mycobiome in response to climate change correlated with “ecosystem-scale” measurements like carbon and nitrogen stocks and vegetation productivity at a global scale?
We stress that this work will focus exclusively on global-scale analyses. We hope that the data we generate for you can enable deeper, local-scale analyses that you will lead within your research unit. We are also very happy to support these efforts.
Read our full call for collaboration here.
Why we are focused on fungi?
Fungi are essential decomposers in every terrestrial ecosystem, capable of generating >10g of a single decomposing enzyme in days (Viniegra-González et al. 2003), roughly the same weight as ten nails!
Fungi shape plant productivity through nutrient provisioning, carbon sanctioning, and the modulation of immune system functions. This is especially apparent for symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi whose biodiversity is linked to plant productivity (Anthony et al. 2022).
When fungi die, their necromass contributes substantially to the formation of soil organic matter, upwards of 50% of all soil organic carbon may be derived from fungi (Liang et al. 2019). Managing our ecosystems to support certain communities of fungi could increase land carbon storage.
We know less about fungi compared to other microscopic organisms.