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A trait-based understanding of wood decomposition by fungi.

  • Lustenhouwer N Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; nlustenh@ucsc.edu.
  • Maynard DS Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Bradford MA School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
  • Lindner DL Northern Research Station, US Forest Service, Madison, WI 53726.
  • Oberle B Division of Natural Sciences, New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL 34243.
  • Zanne AE Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052.
  • Crowther TW Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
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  • 2020-05-15
Published in:
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - 2020
carbon cycle
decay rate
functional biogeography
fungal traits
wood decomposition
Carbon Cycle
Ecosystem
Fungi
Hyphae
Mycobiome
North America
Wood
English As the primary decomposers of organic material in terrestrial ecosystems, fungi are critical agents of the global carbon cycle. Yet our ability to link fungal community composition to ecosystem functioning is constrained by a limited understanding of the factors accounting for different wood decomposition rates among fungi. Here we examine which traits best explain fungal decomposition ability by combining detailed trait-based assays on 34 saprotrophic fungi from across North America in the laboratory with a 5-y field study comprising 1,582 fungi isolated from 74 decomposing logs. Fungal growth rate (hyphal extension rate) was the strongest single predictor of fungal-mediated wood decomposition rate under laboratory conditions, and accounted for up to 27% of the in situ variation in decomposition in the field. At the individual level, decomposition rate was negatively correlated with moisture niche width (an indicator of drought stress tolerance) and with the production of nutrient-mineralizing extracellular enzymes. Together, these results suggest that decomposition rates strongly align with a dominance-tolerance life-history trade-off that was previously identified in these isolates, forming a spectrum from slow-growing, stress-tolerant fungi that are poor decomposers to fast-growing, highly competitive fungi with fast decomposition rates. Our study illustrates how an understanding of fungal trait variation could improve our predictive ability of the early and midstages of wood decay, to which our findings are most applicable. By mapping our results onto the biogeographic distribution of the dominance-tolerance trade-off across North America, we approximate broad-scale patterns in intrinsic fungal-mediated wood decomposition rates.
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  • English
Open access status
bronze
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/36048
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