The methodical developments in the fields of molecular biology and analytical chemistry significantly increased the level of detail that we achieve when exploring soils and their microbial inhabitants. High-resolution description of microbial communities, detection of taxa with minor abundances, screening of gene expression or the detailed characterization of metabolomes are nowadays technically feasible. Despite all of this, our understanding of soil is limited in many ways. The imperfect tools to describe microbial communities and limited possibilities to assign traits to community members make it difficult to link microbes to functions. Also the analysis of processes exemplified by enzyme activity measurements is still imperfect. In the future, it is important to look at soil at a finer detail to obtain a better picture on the properties of individual microbes, their in situ interactions, metabolic rates and activity at a scale relevant to individual microbes. Scaling up is needed as well to get answers at ecosystem or biome levels and to enable global modelling. The recent development of novel tools including metabolomics, identification of genomes in metagenomics sequencing datasets or collection of trait data have the potential to bring soil ecology further. It will, however, always remain a highly demanding scientific discipline.

• MeSH
• Bacteria klasifikace   enzymologie   genetika   MeSH
• ekologie MeSH
• ekosystém MeSH
• houby klasifikace   enzymologie   genetika   MeSH
• metabolomika MeSH
• metagenomika MeSH
• mikrobiota genetika   MeSH
• půda chemie   MeSH
• půdní mikrobiologie * MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• přehledy MeSH

Highly acidic soils (pH < 3) represent an environment which might potentially offer new biotechnologically interesting fungi. Nevertheless, only little data on fungal communities in highly acidic habitats are available. Here, we focused on the diversity of cultivable filamentous microfungi in highly acidic soils (pH < 3) in the Czech Republic. Altogether, 16 soil samples were collected from four sampling sites and were processed by various approaches. In total, 54 fungal taxa were isolated and identified using classical as well as molecular markers. All dominant species were found both as living mycelia and as resistant stages. Numerous recently described or unknown taxa were isolated. The core of the fungal assemblage under study consisted of phylogenetically unrelated and often globally distributed fungi exclusively inhabiting highly acidic habitats like Acidiella bohemica, Acidomyces acidophilus, and unidentified helotialean fungus, as well as taxa known from less acidic and often extreme environments like Acidea extrema, Penicillium simplicissimum s.l., and Penicillium spinulosum. The large number of identified specialized species indicates that highly acidic environments provide suitable conditions for the evolution of specialist species. The occurrence of ubiquitous fungi in highly acidic substrates points to the principal role of competition in the colonization of such environments. The detected taxa did not require low pH to survive, because they can grow in a broad range of pH.

• MeSH
• Ascomycota klasifikace   izolace a purifikace   MeSH
• biodiverzita * MeSH
• DNA fungální analýza   MeSH
• druhová specificita MeSH
• ekosystém MeSH
• fylogeneze * MeSH
• houby klasifikace   genetika   růst a vývoj   izolace a purifikace   MeSH
• klasifikace MeSH
• koncentrace vodíkových iontů MeSH
• kyseliny MeSH
• Penicillium klasifikace   izolace a purifikace   MeSH
• půda chemie   MeSH
• půdní mikrobiologie * MeSH
• sekvence nukleotidů MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH