4.7 Article

Fungal diversity and community structure from coastal and barrier island beaches in the United States Gulf of Mexico

Journal

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages -

Publisher

NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-81688-5

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Mycological Society of America 2011 Myron P. Backus Graduate Fellowship Award
  2. University of Southern Mississippi Doctoral Research Award
  3. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant [NSERC-2017-04325]
  4. NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral award (CGS-D)

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This study investigated fungal communities in intertidal areas of Gulf of Mexico sand beaches in the United States, and found that fungal diversity increased with decreasing latitude and was strongly influenced by substrate type.
Fungi are an important and understudied component of coastal biomes including sand beaches. Basic biogeographic diversity data are lacking for marine fungi in most parts of the world, despite their important role in decomposition. We examined intertidal fungal communities at several United States (US) Gulf of Mexico sand beach sites using morphology and ITS rDNA terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analyses. Fungal biogeographical patterns from sand beach detritus (wood, emergent plant [mangrove/ saltmarsh], or marine [algae, seagrass]) from Florida, Mississippi, and Texas were investigated using diversity indices and multivariate analyses. Fungal diversity increased with decreasing latitude at our study sites. Substrate type strongly influenced fungal community structure in this region, with different fungal communities on detrital marine versus emergent substrates, as well as detrital marine versus wood substrates. Thirty-five fungi were identified morphologically, including new regional and host records. Of these, 86% were unique to an individual collection (i.e., sampled once from one site). Rarefaction curves from pooled morphological data from all sites estimate the number of samples required to characterize the mycota of each substrate. As sampling occurred before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (April-2010), our findings contribute pre-oil spill sand beach biodiversity data and marine fungal distribution trends within this economically important oceanographic region.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available