Prolonged impacts of past agriculture and ungulate overabundance on soil fungal communities in restored forests

Soil fungi can help improve ecosystem restoration, yet our understanding of how they reassemble in degraded land is limited. Here, using DNA metabarcoding, we studied the fungal community structure in reforested sites following agricultural abandonment and ungulate overabundance. Two treatments, namely ‘reforestation using different numbers of tree species’ and ‘deer exclusion,’ have been applied for multiple decades in the study sites. We found that local fungal richness (alpha diversity) and total fungal richness (gamma diversity) were 1.9–2.9 and 1.3–1.9 times greater, respectively, in reforested stands than in natural forests. These results were regardless of the number of tree species planted in the reforested stands. Conversely, reforested stands had a spatially homogenized community structure with relatively lower degrees of compositional dissimilarity among sites within each stand (beta diversity). These findings were attributable to lower environmental heterogeneity, stronger d...土壤真菌可有效促进生态系统修复，但当前学界对其在退化土地中的重建过程仍缺乏充分认知。本研究采用DNA元条形码（DNA metabarcoding）技术，针对农地撂荒与有蹄类动物过度繁衍导致的退化土地，分析其再造林样地的土壤真菌群落结构。本研究样地已实施两项长达数十年的操控实验：其一为‘调整造林树种数量的再造林方案’，其二为‘鹿类排除措施’。研究结果显示，相较于天然林，再造林林分的局部真菌丰富度（α多样性，alpha diversity）与总真菌丰富度（γ多样性，gamma diversity）分别提升1.9~2.9倍与1.3~1.9倍，且该结果与再造林林分的种植树种数量无显著关联。与之相对，再造林林分的群落结构空间异质性更低，各林分内样地间的群落组成差异度（β多样性，beta diversity）相对更小。上述结论可归因于更低的环境异质性与更强的……