Coupled Metagenomic and Chemical Analyses of Degrading Fungal Necromass and Implications for Fungal Contributions to Stable Soil Organic Carbon.

Fungi comprise a significant portion of total soil biomass, the turnover of which must represent a dominant flux within the soil carbon cycle. Fungal OC can turn over on time scales of days to months, but this process is poorly understood. Here, we examined temporal changes in the chemical and microbial community composition of fungal necromass during a 2-month decomposition experiment in which Fusarium avenaceum (a common saprophyte) was exposed to a natural soil microbial community. Over the course of the experiment, residual fungal necromass was harvested and analyzed using FTIR and thermochemolysis-GCMS to examine chemical changes in the tissue. In addition, genomic DNA was extracted from tissues, amplified with barcoded ITS primers, and sequenced using the high-throughput Illumina platform to examine changes in microbial community composition. Up to 80% of the fungal necromass turned over in the first week. This rapid degradation phase corresponded to colonization of the necromass by known chitinolytic soil fungi including Mortierella species. Zygomycetes and Ascomycetes were among the dominant fungal groups involved in degradation with very small contributions from Basidiomycetes. At the end of the 2-month degradation, only 15% of the original necromass remained. The residual material was rich in amide and C-O moieties which is consistent with previous work predicting that peptidoglycans are the main residual product from microbial tissue degradation. Straight-chain fatty acids exhibit varying degradation profiles, with some fatty acids (e.g. C₁₆, C_18:1) degrading more rapidly than bulk tissue, others maintaining steady concentrations relative to bulk OC (C₁₈), and some increasing in concentration throughout the degradation (C24). These results indicate that the turnover of fungal necromass has the potential to significantly influence a variety of soil OC properties, including C/N ratios, lipid biomarker distributions, and OC turnover times.