Revealing Fungal Communities in Alpine Wetlands through Species Diversity, Functional Diversity and Ecological Network Diversity

The biodiversity of fungi, which are extremely important in maintaining the ecosystem balance in alpine lakeside wetlands, has not been fully studied. In this study, we investigated the fungal communities of three lakeside wetlands from different altitudes in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and its edge. The results showed that the fungi of the alpine lakeside wetland had higher species diversity. Functional annotation of fungi by FUNGild software showed that saprophytic fungi were the most abundant type in all three wetlands. Further analysis of the microbial phylogenetic molecular ecological network (pMEN) showed that saprophytic fungi are important species in the three wetland fungal networks, while symbiotic fungi and pathotrophic fungi have different roles in the fungal networks in different wetlands. Community diversity was high in all three lakeside wetlands, but there were significant differences in the composition, function and network structure of the fungal communities. Contemporary environmental conditions (soil properties) and historical contingencies (geographic sampling location) jointly determine fungi community diversity in this study. These results expand our knowledge of fungal biodiversity in the alpine lakeside wetlands.