Abstract

Fennoscandian forestry has in the past decades changed from natural regeneration of forests towards replantation of clear-cuts, which negatively impacts ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) diversity. Retention of trees during harvesting enables EMF survival, and we therefore expected EMF communities to be more similar to those in old natural stands after forest regeneration using seed trees compared to full clear-cutting and replanting. We sequenced fungal internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) amplicons to assess EMF communities in 10- to 60-year-old Scots pine stands regenerated either using seed trees or through replanting of clear-cuts with old natural stands as reference. We also investigated local EMF communities around retained old trees. We found that retention of seed trees failed to mitigate the impact of harvesting on EMF community composition and diversity. With increasing stand age, EMF communities became increasingly similar to those in old natural stands and permanently retained trees maintained EMF locally. From our observations, we conclude that EMF com m unities, at least common species, post-harvest are more influenced by environmental filtering, resulting from environmental changes induced by harvest, than by the continuity of trees. These results suggest that retention of intact forest patches is a more efficient way to conserve EMF diversity than retaining dispersed single trees.

Keywords

clear-cutting; seed trees; retention trees; pinus sylvestris; high-throughput sequencing; ectomycorrhizal fungi

Published in

FEMS Microbiology Ecology
2017, Volume: 93, number: 9, article number: fix105
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS

SLU Authors

• Varenius, Kerstin

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Lindahl, Björn

  • Department of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Dahlberg, Anders

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fix105

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/92697