| Abstract Detail
MSA - Ecology/Pathology Jumpponen, Ari [1], Jones, Ken [2], Blair, John [3]. Phyllosphere fungal communities differ among the urban and non-urban environments – analysis across a growing season. Urban human population is predicted to increase by 50% within the next thirty years. The increasing human population inevitably leads to increasing urban land area. Accordingly, urbanization is considered among the greatest threats to biological diversity. Fungal communities inhabiting the phyllospheres of temperate and tropical trees have been considered hyperdiverse. We analyzed such hyperdiverse phyllosphere fungal communities in and around a small urban center (Manhattan, Kansas) by 454-sequencing fungal ITS with DNA-tagged primers for sample identification. Samples from six urban and paired non-urban trees were collected six times through a growing season to census the seasonal variability within these communities and to identify richness, diversity and compositional differences among the urban and non-urban trees. Our results show that urban communities host a less diverse and less species-rich phyllosphere community that also differs in composition from those outside of the urban center. The richness varied through the growing season in both environments. Surprisingly, assuming that opening leaf buds maintain very limited fungal communities, the phyllosphere communities were rapidly recruited after the bud burst. Additionally, new leaf recruitment resulted in oscillations in the phyllosphere fungal community richness. Although chemical parameters in an environmental data matrix were correlated with the taxon abundances, we argue that the observed richness/diversity differences stem mainly from anthropogenic activities such as removal of senescent plant debris that houses fungal inoculum.
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1 - Kansas State University, Division of Biology, Ackert Hall, Manhattan, Kansas, 66506-4901, USA
2 - University of Georgia, Environmental Health Sciences, Athens, Georgia, 30602, USA
3 - Kansas State University, Division of Biology, Manhattan, Kansas, 66506, USA
Keywords:
Biodiversity
foliar fungi
fungal communities
seasonal dynamics
urbanization.
Presentation Type: Oral Paper:Papers for Topics
Session: 52
Location: Cottonwood B/Snowbird Center
Date: Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Time: 2:45 PM
Number: 52006
Abstract ID:328 |
