Alpine tundra ecosystems suffer from ongoing warming-induced tree encroachment and vegetation shifts. While the effects of tree line expansion on the alpine ecosystem receive a lot of attention, there is also an urgent need for understanding the effect of climate change on shifts within alpine vegetation itself, and how these shifts will consequently affect soil microorganisms and related ecosystem characteristics such as carbon storage. For this purpose, we explored relationships between climate, soil chemistry, vegetation, and fungal communities across seven mountain ranges at 16 alpine tundra locations in Europe. Among environmental factors, our data highlighted that plant community composition had the most important influence on variation in fungal community composition when considered in combination with other factors, while climatic factors had the most important influence solely. According to our results, we suggest that rising temperature, associated with a replacement of ericoid-dominated alpine vegetation by non-mycorrhizal or arbuscular mycorrhizal herbs and grasses, will induce profound changes in fungal communities toward higher dominance of saprotrophic and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi at the expense of fungal root endophytes. Consequently, topsoil fungal biomass and carbon content will decrease.

Centre for Environmental Sciences Hasselt University Martelarenlaan 42 Hasselt 3500 Belgium

Faculty of Science Charles University Albertov 6 Prague 128 40 Czechia

Institute of Environmental Sciences Leiden University Rapenburg 70 Leiden 2311 the Netherlands

Institute of Microbiology Czech Academy of Science Vídeňská 1083 Prague 142 20 Czechia

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org

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Editorial: Theme issue on the ecology of soil microorganisms