BioProject

The altitudinal partitioning of the distributions of phyllosphere fungal assemblages in conspecific plants remains poorly elucidated. More...

The altitudinal partitioning of the distributions of phyllosphere fungal assemblages in conspecific plants remains poorly elucidated. To address this, phyllosphere fungal communities associated with Mussaenda shikokiana were investigated at four sites across an altitude gradient of about 350 m by employing Illumina metabarcoding of the fungal ITS2 region. The results demonstrated that the phyllosphere fungal assemblages possessed high diversity in taxonomic classification and trophic guilds. Elevation strongly structured the fungal community composition and the species richness increased significantly with increasing elevation. Additionally, comparison of the phyllosphere fungal networks showed reduced connectivity along the elevation gradient. These findings provide insight on the effects of elevation on the distribution and inter-taxa interactions of the phyllosphere fungal community associated with a single host by using high-throughput sequencing Less...