Our study suggests the presence of undescribed, yet ecologically meaningful taxa, especially in the fungi, and highlights the importance of bark surfaces as a reservoir of microbial diversity. Conversely, forest management intensity had negligible effects on microbial communities on bark.
#TREESIZE TREE DRIVER#
We found that tree size (as a proxy for age) is an important driver of community assembly, suggesting that environmental filtering leads to less diverse fungal and algal communities over time.
We identified the most abundant taxa, hub taxa, and co-occurring taxa. Here we implemented a multi-kingdom metabarcoding approach to analyze diversity and community structure of the green algal, bacterial, and fungal components of the bark-associated microbial communities of beech, the most common broadleaved tree of Central European forests. We have a limited understanding of the diversity and biotic interactions of the bark-associated microbiome, as investigations have mainly focused on agriculturally relevant systems and on single taxonomic groups. Bacteria, fungi, and terrestrial microalgae together form microbial communities, which in turn support more bark-associated organisms, such as mosses, lichens, and invertebrates, thus contributing to forest biodiversity. Tree bark constitutes an ideal habitat for microbial communities, because it is a stable substrate, rich in micro-niches. 4Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.3LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (TBG), Frankfurt, Germany.2Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), Frankfurt, Germany.1Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.Lukas Dreyling 1,2*, Imke Schmitt 1,2,3 and Francesco Dal Grande 2,3,4*
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