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Fungal communities in Norwegian forests are highly diverse and species-rich. Fulfilling roles as mutualists, pathogens, parasites and decomposers, it is hard to imagine how a forest ecosystem would function without fungi. In this thesis I describe fungal communities in Norwegian boreal forests and how they are structured by the environment and the composition of vegetation and how forestry may impact fungal communities following clear-cutting.
In the first paper I use DNA-metabarcoding to describe how soil fungal communities in a forest reserve with negligible human impact are structured and influenced by the vegetation composition, soil edaphic parameters and topographic factors in the landscape. Soil was sampled along several transects representing transition from moist, shaded spruce forests to dry and topographically exposed pine forests, a common landscape characteristic in boreal ecosystem. I show that vegetation composition is the major driver of fungal community structure, more so than either topography or soil parameters. This likely reflects the tight symbiosis between many fungal species and plants, and the fact that vegetation and soil fungi are structured by similar processes over longer time scales.
The next three papers are from the EcoForest project, investigating fungal communities in south-eastern Norwegian spruce forests in the context of clear-cutting and long-term regeneration of community composition. By setting up 12 paired forest sites, with a plot in a five-to-nine-decade old previously clear-cut forest and a nearby plot in a forest that has never been clear-cut, we aim to investigate to what extent fungal communities in soil and deadwood y recover following clear-cutting, using the near-natural sites as reference. Applying DNA-metabarcoding, I found no differences in species richness or species diversity between soil fungal communities in the previous clear-cut and the near-natural forests. Instead, species identity and the relative abundances of species in the community are different. Previously clear-cut plots seemingly have a larger abundance of soil fungi adapted for faster nutrient turnover and more accessible forms of nutrients, while the near-natural forest soil fungal communities supported more slow-growing fungi adapted to accessing organically bound nutrients and slower nutrient turnover.
I also describe a long-term shift in the deadwood-inhabiting fungal communities. Many wood-decomposing fungi in the Polyporales, Hymenochaetales and Helotiales were more abundant in near-natural forest sites. This was not simply due to the forest type but was strongly driven by the diversity and variability of the deadwood on the forest floor. In essence, a previous clear-cut forest with high diversity of deadwood would host higher fungal richness and diversity than a near-natural forest with low deadwood variability. The majority of red-listed fungal species, however, were restricted to the near-natural forests. I found, in addition, a vast diversity of yeasts outnumbering the more conspicuous deadwood decomposing fungi. This community also exhibited compositional shifts in response to deadwood variability among sites.
Finally, I combine the data from soil and deadwood to investigate how certain species in the ectomycorrhizal community may grow and proliferate within deadwood on the forest floor. The few ectomycorrhizal species inhabiting deadwood were consistent across sites and comprised species known to access and mobilize nitrogen bound in complex organic forms. For some species this may represent an important adaptation in boreal forest soils, where soluble nitrogen is generally low and competition with soil saprotrophs is high, additionally, there is competition with other ectomycorrhizal species more specialized for the fast absorption of mineral nutrients. Deadwood on the forest floor may thus act as “nutrient banks” for certain ectomycorrhizal species adapted to this habitat, characterized by low carbon availability, but high concentrations of organic nitrogen and other vital nutrients.