Project Details
Projekt Print View

Factors driving the distribution and diversity of protistan plant pathogens in grasslands and forests of the Biodiversity Exploratories (PATHOGEN)

Subject Area Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
Ecology of Land Use
Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
Term from 2017 to 2021
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 325199846
 
Final Report Year 2021

Final Report Abstract

We provide here a baseline of the diversity and distribution of soil oomycetes, classified by lifestyles (biotrophy, hemibiotrophy and saprotrophy), and of cercozoan/endomyxan, classified by trophic guilds (bacterivory, eukaryvory, omnivory and plant parasites). In Oomycetes, we found a majority of hemibiotrophic plant pathogens, which are parasites spending part of their life cycle as saprotrophs after the death of the host. For Cercozoa/Endomyxa, our study surprisingly showed that endomyxan plant parasites of worldwide importance (Phytomyxea) were absent from forests, but were responsive to anthropogenic land-use intensification in grasslands. We found drastic differences in protistan community composition between grassland and forest. In forest, relative abundances of cercozoan bacterivores/eukaryvores and of oomycete obligate biotrophs/hemibiotrophs differed between regions and showed opposite responses to edaphic conditions and human-induced management intensification, suggesting different ecological requirements for these two functional guilds.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung