Life Strategies among Fungal Assemblages on Salicornia europaea Aggregate

Frequencies of isolation and occurrence of 24 fungal taxa from washed root and shoot pieces of Salicornia europaea are variable over plant collections made along a conductivity gradient represented by four halomorphic sites in western Manitoba and central Saskatchewan. Assemblage dominance, a chi-square derived coefficient of association between sites, ordination of percent stress, disturbance and competition contributed by taxa in life strategy spectra of the assemblages, sum of squares agglomerative clustering of an Ochiai index distance matrix, concentration analysis of site and species scattergrams and environmental data across the sites distinguish three rhizoplane and two cauloplane communities. Among rhizoplane assemblages, ruderals and stress-tolerant ruderals characterize the assemblages from the two sites (respectively Indy and Strap lakes) at the low end of the conductivity gradient. Stresstolerant competitors represent the principal life strategy from the sites (Shoal and Muskiki lakes) at the higher end of the gradient. Cauloplane fungi are competitors across the sites with additional stresstolerant competitive elements in the Shoal assemblage and competitive ruderal taxa in the Muskiki assemblage.