Diversity and composition of culturable fungi in Horqin Sandy Land

Soil fungi play a key role in soil functional performance and ecological restoration.To understand the diversity and composition of culturable fungi in soils of Horqin Sandy Land,China,mobile dune,semi-fixed dune,fixed dune and sandy grassland were selected to investigate the soil fungal diversity using a traditional culture-dependent approach.ITS sequencing was applied to identify the fungal strains.The counts of culturable fungi increased significantly from mobile dune to sandy grassland along the gradient of sandy land restoration.The Shannon-Wiener,Simpson and Evenness indices of culturable fungi ranged from 1.26-1.71,0.22-0.37 and 0.83-0.87,respectively.A total of 27 fungal strains were isolated using dilution plate cultural technique.The 27 fungal isolates were clustered into three groups:Ascomycota,Basidiomycota and Mucoromycota at phylum level,indicating that Ascomycota was the dominant fungal phylum(88.9%of the total).The isolated fungi were grouped into 3 phyla,5 classes,6 orders,11 families and 13 genera.The results show that culturable fungi were diverse in sandy land soils and fungal isolates have potential function in lipid turnover,cellulose degradation and ethanol,glucose and fatty acid production.Future studies should be carried out to explore their ecological and biological function for degraded sandy land restoration.

The diversity of soil culturable fungi in the three alpine shrub grasslands of Eastern Qilian Mountains

To understand the diversity of culturable fungi in soil at alpine sites, Rhododendron fruticosa shrubland, Salix cupularis fruticosa shrubland, and Dasiphoru fruticosa shrubland of the Eastern Qilian Mountains were selected to investigate. Three methods, including tradi- tional culturing, rDNA internal transcribed spacer （ITS） sequence analysis, and economical efficiency analysis, were carried out to estimate the diversity of soil culturable fungi of these three alpine shmblands. A total of 35 strains of culturable fungi were cultured by dilution plate technique and were analyzed by rDNA ITS sequence. The diversity indices such as species abundance （S）, Shannon-Wiener index （H）, Simpson dominance index （D）, and Pielou evenness index （3） of Rhododendron fruticosa shrubland, Salix cupularis fruticosa shrubland, and Dasiphoru fruticosa shrubland were ranged between 16 and 17, 2.66-2.71, 0.92, 0.95~）.97 respectively. The results showed that the diversity of soil fungi were abundant in these three types of alpine shrub grasslands, while further study should be done to explore their potential value.