Fungal community structure and seasonal trajectories respond similarly to fire across pyrophilic ecosystems

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Issue Date
2020-11-05Author
Hopkins, Jacob R.
Semenova-Nelsen, Tatiana
Sikes, Benjamin A.
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Rights
© FEMS 2020. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
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Show full item recordAbstract
Fire alters microbial community composition, and is expected to increase in frequency due to climate change. Testing whether microbes in different ecosystems will respond similarly to increased fire disturbance is difficult though, because fires are often unpredictable and hard to manage. Fire recurrent or pyrophilic ecosystems, however, may be useful models for testing the effects of frequent disturbance on microbes. We hypothesized that across pyrophilic ecosystems, fire would drive similar alterations to fungal communities, including altering seasonal community dynamics. We tested fire's effects on fungal communities in two pyrophilic ecosystems, a longleaf pine savanna and tallgrass prairie. Fire caused similar fungal community shifts, including (i) driving immediate changes that favored taxa able to survive fire and take advantage of post-fire environments and (ii) altering seasonal trajectories due to fire-associated changes to soil nutrient availability. This suggests that fire has predictable effects on fungal community structure and intra-annual community dynamics in pyrophilic ecosystems, and that these changes could significantly alter fungal function. Parallel fire responses in these key microbes may also suggest that recurrent fires drive convergent changes across ecosystems, including less fire-frequented systems that may start burning more often due to climate change.
Description
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in FEMS Microbiology Ecology following peer review. The version of record Jacob R Hopkins, Tatiana Semenova-Nelsen, Benjamin A Sikes, Fungal community structure and seasonal trajectories respond similarly to fire across pyrophilic ecosystems, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 97, Issue 1, January 2021, fiaa219, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaa219 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaa219 and https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/97/1/fiaa219/5956485?login=true
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Citation
Jacob R Hopkins, Tatiana Semenova-Nelsen, Benjamin A Sikes, Fungal community structure and seasonal trajectories respond similarly to fire across pyrophilic ecosystems, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 97, Issue 1, January 2021, fiaa219, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaa219
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