Characterization of active and total fungal communities in the atmosphere over the Amazon rainforest

[摘要] Fungi are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and may play an important role inatmospheric processes. We investigated the composition and diversity offungal communities over the Amazon rainforest canopy and compared thesecommunities to fungal communities found in terrestrial environments. Wecharacterized the total fungal community and the metabolically activeportion of the community using high-throughput DNA and RNA sequencing andcompared these data to predictions generated by a mass-balance model. Wefound that the total community was primarily comprised of fungi from thephylum Basidiomycota. In contrast, the active community was primarilycomposed of members of the phylum Ascomycota and included a high relativeabundance of lichen fungi, which were not detected in the total community.The relative abundance of Basidiomycota and Ascomycota in the total andactive communities was consistent with our model predictions, suggestingthat this result was driven by the relative size and number of sporesproduced by these groups. When compared to other environments, fungalcommunities in the atmosphere were most similar to communities found intropical soils and leaf surfaces. Our results demonstrate that there aresignificant differences in the composition of the total and active fungalcommunities in the atmosphere, and that lichen fungi, which have been shownto be efficient ice nucleators, may be abundant members of activeatmospheric fungal communities over the forest canopy.

[学科分类] 地球化学与岩石