Community composition of arctic root-associated fungi mirrors host plant phylogeny ...

• Main Authors: Botnen, S S, Thoen, E, Eidesen, P B, Krabberød, A K, Kauserud, H
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Svalbard; Arctic Archipelago
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6wwpzgmwr; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.6wwpzgmwr

The number of plant species regarded as non-mycorrhizal increases at higher latitudes, and several plant species in the High-Arctic Archipelago Svalbard have been reported as non-mycorrhizal. We used the rRNA ITS2 and 18S gene markers to survey which fungi, as well as other micro-eukaryotes, were associated with roots of 31 arctic plant species not usually regarded as mycorrhizal in Svalbard. We assessed to what degree the root-associated fungi showed any host preference and whether the phylogeny of the plant hosts may mirror the composition of root-associated fungi. Fungal communities were largely structured according to host plant identity and to a less extent by environmental factors. We observed a positive relationship between the phylogenetic distance of host plants and the distance of fungal community composition between samples, indicating that the evolutionary history of the host plants plays a major role for which fungi colonize the plant roots. In contrast to the ITS2 marker, the 18S rRNA gene ... : ITS2 fungal amplicon data, and general eukarytic 18S V4 data from the roots of 31 arctic plant species. ...