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Alberto Sanchez Lozano
The first global study of soil fungi, carried out by the collaboration of different scientists from Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain, shows quite surprising things. In this research, in which the URJC researcher Marie Curie Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, also a member of the Laboratory of Ecology of Arid Zones and Global Change, has participated. The director of this laboratory is the URJC professor and researcher at the University of Alicante Fernando T. Maestre, who has also collaborated with this analysis.
This research has identified 80 dominant fungal species, less than 0,1% of the total varieties observed during the study. These species comprise about 20% of the population of the organisms found in the soils studied. “Fungal communities follow a dynamic very similar to that observed with the distribution of wealth in our society: a few people concentrate most of the existing wealth on earth. Similar patterns have also been observed in other organisms, such as trees in the Amazon rainforest or soil bacteria”, highlights Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, a research participant.
Fungi play a key role as decomposers of organic matter in natural and agricultural ecosystems and are essential for maintaining soil fertility. The study, in which the two URJC researchers have participated, allows a better understanding of the global distribution and environmental preferences of the dominant fungi in the planet's soils.
The job, published in the magazine 'Nature Communications', also highlights, in addition to the important gastronomic value of these organisms (they give rise to the appearance of fungi and mushrooms, in addition to controlling the fermentation of products such as wine or beer), their medical role (they allow the creation of antibiotics such as penicillin), and their economic role (they help capture water and nutrients for plants, or are important agricultural pests). Fungi are also fundamental to the ecosystem as decomposers of organic matter.
First investigation of its kind
“One gram of soil contains hundreds of species and hundreds of thousands of fungal cells. However, when studying in more detail the characteristics of the dominant fungi in soils all over the world, we find that the strongest species are those characterized by a great capacity for dispersion, possessing numerous genes associated with the ability to withstand adverse environmental conditions and that include decomposers and generalist organisms capable of surviving in different environmental conditions throughout the length and breadth of the earth”, highlights Delgado-Baquerizo.
In this way, the scientists and researchers participating in this study have generated the first global atlas of fungi. All this based on the environmental preferences of these organisms, conditioned by the characteristics of the climate and the soil. “Our study illustrates how to predict dominant soil fungal assemblages using environmental information, which is a fundamental step forward in being able to map the distribution of these organisms globally and understand how climate change is going to affect their distribution in the future. ”, points out URJC professor Fernando T. Maestre.
This information is very useful to know how climate change will affect its distribution in the future. In addition, "an important aspect of the study is that several of the species that we have identified are of particular interest to humans, since they are pathogens that affect different crops and ourselves," said this researcher.
"So if these species of fungi can expand with climate change, there is the possibility that the incidence of diseases transmitted by them can also increase", pointed out the URJC professor. In this research, the most advanced genomic techniques have also been used to better understand the characteristics of these fungi and why they are so dominant in the planet's soils.
"By studying in more detail the characteristics of the dominant fungi, we found that among these there are aspects such as their ability to be dispersed over great distances by the wind and the possession of numerous genes associated with the ability to withstand adverse environmental conditions and capture resources such as nutrients", concluded Maestre.