Fungal Communities in Soils Along an Elevation Gradient in Northern England

ABSTRACT

Soil samples were collected from six sites, along an elevation gradient in the northern Pennines, and soil microfungi were isolated using the soil washing method. Data on the abundance of soil fungi were analysed, using analysis of variance, factor analysis and discriminant analysis in order to detect trends that could be related to the gradient of environmental conditions.

The analyses showed that these moorland soils had microfungal communities that shared both the characteristics of acid heathland soils and of true tundra soils. Many species had distinct distributions along the elevation gradient, Chrysosporium merdarium, Penicillium melinii, Paecilomyces carneus, Trichoderma hamatum, and Penicillium daleae being most abundant at lower elevations, whereas P. simplicissimum, P. canescens, P. spinulosum, T. viride, and P. lividum were most abundant at higher elevations.

Whereas both multivariate methods revealed the seasonal and spatial trends in the data, discriminant analysis proved most useful in interpreting the data.

• Key Words
• microfungi
• multivariate analysis
• soil
• elevation gradient
• moorlands