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In his seminal paper, Göte Turesson proposed the term ecotype as the 'ecological unit to cover the product arising as a result of the genotypical response of an ecospecies to a particular habitat'. Turesson further outlined that to fully understand the ecology of a species, a knowledge of its most important ecotypes is needed. Whereas Turesson's original idea of an ecotype mainly referred to the response of a species to abiotic conditions, there is mounting evidence that ecotypes can also originate as a response to biotic conditions. Hence, to understand the ecology of a species, one should also understand the distribution and variation in biotic interactions. For plants, one such biotic interaction involves mycorrhizal fungi. Particularly in mycoheterotrophic plants, i.e. plants that rely on mycorrhizal fungi for their carbon supply, adaptation to and specialization on mycorrhizal fungi have the potential to drive ecotype formation and speciation. In this paper, we provide evidence that populations of mycoheterotrophic plants inhabiting contrasting habitats commonly encounter divergent mycorrhizal fungal communities leading to geographic mosaics of mycorrhizal interactions. Adaptation to local fungal communities, in turn, can induce (partial) reproductive isolation and contribute to ecotype and ultimately species formation as a result of decreased fitness of immigrant genotypes (immigrant inviability). In the most extreme case, loss of photosynthesis and mycorrhizal switching have led to reproductive isolation and the development of novel species that have become fully mycoheterotrophic. Such shifts have occurred repeatedly during the evolutionary history of land plants. We conclude that mycorrhizal fungi not only contribute to the early divergence of populations of mycoheterotrophic plants, but also play a crucial role in the further diversification and origination of this unique set of species that rely on mycorrhizal fungi for obtaining carbon and completing their life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, managed forest ( MF) and natural forest ( NF) in the Huajiang Demonstration Zone of Guanling, Guizhou were selected as research objects, and cropland ( CL) was taken as control. High-throughput sequencing technology was used to study the characteristics of fungal community composition and species diversity in the surface ( 0 - 10 cm) soil of each restoration measure, in order to reveal the dominant soil fungal groups and fungal community composition in karst rocky desertification areas, which was conducive to a more comprehensive understanding of the soil conditions of different vegetation restoration measures. Research has shown that vegetation restoration significantly affected the diversity of soil fungal community, with significant increases in Sob index, Ace index, and Chao index. The vegetation restoration has significantly changed the composition of fungal community. The dominant fungi in the CL topsoil are Sordariomycetes (62. 28%), Dothideomycetes (12. 34%), and Eurotiomycetes (9. 12%); the dominant fungi in the MF soil are Sordariomycetes ( 45. 05%), Dothideomycetes ( 14. 74%), and Mortierellomycetes ( 10. 40%) ; the dominant fungi in the NF soil are unclassified fungal community (26. 38%), Sordariomycetes ( 19. 78%), and Agaricomycetes ( 13. 82%). Vegetation restoration has changed the key fungal groups in the soil. Sordariomycetes, Fwarium, and Setophoma are the key dominant fungal groups in CL soil; Dioszegia is key dominant fungal group in MF soil; c_unclassified_k_Fungi, p_unclassified_k_Fungi, o_unclassified_k_Fungi, f_unclassified_k_Fungi, g_unclassified_k_Fungi, Teichospora, and Diaporthe are key dominant fungal groups in NF soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Objectives] This paper was to figure out whether the dominant bacterial community has the role and effect of bacterial community and its defense mechanism against potential pathogenic fungi in Artemisia annua, and thus establish a systematic model of bacteria-fungus-plant. [Methods] Fifty-eight strains of bacteria and one strain of pathogenic fungi, Globisporangium ultimatum, were used for the experiments. These 58 bacterial strains were assembled into a bacterial community, and the bacteria with abundance in the top 1% were reassembled into a dominant bacterial community as measured by 16S rDNA. [Results] The growth of A. annua seedlings inoculated with bacterial communities and pathogenic fungi or dominant bacterial communities and pathogenic fungi was significantly better than that of A. annua seedlings inoculated with pathogenic fungi during in vitro confrontation, which was evident in both enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant assays. [Conclusions] The results suggest that the dominant bacterial community has a crucial role as a representative core microbial community of synthetic bacterial community, which can protect plants by interfering with the growth of phytopathogenic fungi mediated by chemical signals, and can be used as the main synthetic community of biocides to achieve the effect of biocontrol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper continues the studies on the role of bacteria in the environment of summer truffle (Tuber aestivum), focusing on ascomata at three sites in the Nida Basin (southern Poland). Bacterial taxa and the number of OTU sequences identified were determined based on analysis of peridium and gleba collected in 2017 and 2018. The aim of the presented work is to learn the structure of bacterial communities associated with the ascomata of the summer truffle T. aestivum forming in specific stands in south Poland and fine roots of surrounding trees. Sanger DNA sequencing, and next-generation sequencing (NGS) were used. NGS sequencing platforms short-read (300 bases) was selected, using a MiSeq Illumina. The Kruskall-Wallis test was used for alpha diversity analysis and the PERMANOVA test for beta diversity. Alpha and beta biodiversity analyzes were performed using various indices (Chao1, Simpson, Shannon, Faith's phylogenetic, observed OTUs, Heip's evenness measure - alpha diversity; UniFrac, Jaccard, Bray–Curtis - beta diversity). The Sanger method identified six bacterial taxa that were dominant in the community: Bacillus (86.7 %), Pseudomonas (51.5 %), Stenotrophomonas (15.5 %), Paenibacillus (7.9 %), Rhizobium (7.3 %), and Chryseobacterium (8.5 %). In contrast, NGS results showed the dominance (at OTUs >10,000) of taxa: Bradyrhizobiaceae, Sphingobacteriaceae, Micrococcaceae, Yersiniaceae, Sphingomonadaceae, Rhizobiaceae, Flavobacteriaceae, and Comamonadaceae. The PERMANOVA test for the Bray-Curtis and Jaccard indices showed dissimilarities between samples from two of the sites with respect to beta diversity. Significant differences were found in the bacterial communities colonizing the ascomata of T. aestivum and in the root communities with T. aestivum ectomycorrhizae the purpose of this study. The results obtained may be helpful in selecting and monitoring sites suitable for the formation of ascomata of T. aestivum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Fungal communities were assembled stochastically, while deterministic assembly was configured for bacteria. • Unraveling the dissimilarities in metabolism phenotypes of high-temperature Daqu in differential craft models. • Bacillus, Virgibacillus, Oceanobacillus, Kroppenstedtia, Lactobacillus, Monascus were contributors to metabolic variances. • High temperature, high acid and low moisture were key positive drivers on the formation of the characteristic flavor in high-temperature Daqu. The mechanical process has a widely usage in large-scale high-temperature Daqu (HTD) enterprises, however, the quality of the mechanical HTD is gapped with the HTD by traditional process. Currently, the understanding of the mechanism behind this phenomenon is still over-constrained. To this end, the discrepancies in fermentation parameters, enzymatic characteristics, microbial assembly and succession patterns, metabolic phenotypes were compared between traditional HTD and mechanical HTD in this paper. The results showed that mechanical process altered the temperature ramping procedure, resulting in a delayed appearance of the peak temperature. This alteration shifted the assembly pattern of the initial bacterial community from determinism to stochasticity, while having no impact on the stochastic assembly pattern of the fungal community. Concurrently, mechanical pressing impeded the accumulation of arginase, tetramethylpyrazine, trimethylpyrazine, 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, and butyric acid, as the target dissimilarities in metabolism between traditional HTD and mechanical HTD. Pearson correlation analysis combined with the functional prediction further demonstrated that Bacillus , Virgibacillus , Oceanobacillus , Kroppenstedtia , Lactobacillus , and Monascus were mainly contributors to metabolic variances. The Redundancy analysis (RDA) of fermented environmental factors on functional ASVs indicated that high temperature, high acid and low moisture were key positive drivers on the microbial metabolism for the characteristic flavor in HTD. Based on these results, heterogeneous mechanisms between traditional HTD and mechanical HTD were explored, and controllable metabolism targets were as possible strategies to improve the quality of mechanical HTD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]