Relative importance of water stress and host vitality in structuring root fungal communities in beech forests

Abstract Background and aims In forest ecosystems, trees interact with a broad range of soil microorganisms, such as ectomycorrhizal fungi, improving nutrition and water uptake and mitigating biotic and abiotic stress. In the context of the predicted more frequent and more severe droughts, it is critical to characterise how trees and their associated fungal partners respond to water shortage to improve future forest management. Methods We investigated the importance of diverse environmental predictors (e.g., edaphic, climatic, topographic) on the fungal communities associated with the root systems of decaying and healthy beech trees in natural beech forests. In parallel, we identified specific fungal taxa linked with their host vitality and water stress gradient. Results We observed that soil water shortage had a greater effect on the structuring of fungal communities than beech vitality or other environmental factors. We identified a core group of fungi that remained unaffected by water availability among all study sites, while 17 fungal species (i.e. Lactarius blennius ) were more abundant in sampling sites more prone to water shortage. Finally, we showed that the higher abundance of ectomycorrhizal fungi was significantly associated with healthy beech root systems, while three saprotrophic fungi (i.e. Pezicula radicicola ) prevailed in the roots of trees exhibiting severe decay. Conclusions Overall, our study highlights the major role of drought in structuring fungal communities associated with beech root systems and pinpoints the key fungal taxonomic groups found in healthy beech trees.