Soil freeze-thaw cycles and qualitative change in fungal community

由于冬季积雪减少和气温变化增加，持续的全球变暖预计将增加寒温带和其他高纬度地区土壤冻融循环的复发。目前，北半球一半以上的陆地表面存在森林热带气旋，因此，重要的是要探索气候变化引起的气候变化对生态的影响。关于FTC对真菌群落的影响的知识很少，尽管它们作为菌根共生体和植物病原体的重要性是显而易见的。FTC后植物群落生产力和竞争的强烈变化可能是由真菌群落功能组成的变化引起的。在这个项目中，我们想要分析冬季强化的FTC对与植物相关的真菌群落质量组成的影响。我们使用现有的事件实验样本，并申请了ITS序列分析的资金。

Ongoing global warming is expected to increase the recurrence of soil freeze-thaw cycles (FTC) in cool-temperate and other high-latitude regions due to decreases in snow cover and increased variability of air temperature in winter. FTC currently occur in more than half of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, therefore it is important to explore the ecological implications of their altered regimes due to climate change. Knowledge of FTC effects on fungal communities is scarce, although their importance as mycorrhizal symbionts as well as pathogens for plants is evident. Strong changes in productivity and competition of plant communities after FTC may potentially be triggered by changes in the functional composition of the fungal community. Within this project, we want to analyze the effects of intensified FTC in winter on the qualitative composition of fungal communities associated with the plants. We use existing samples from the EVENT-experiment and apply for financing of an ITS-sequence analysis.