Winter warming rapidly increases carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities in tundra soil: Potential consequences on carbon stability

Abstract

High‐latitude tundra ecosystems are increasingly affected by climate warming. As an important fraction of soil microorganisms, fungi play essential roles in carbon degradation, especially the old, chemically recalcitrant carbon. However, it remains obscure how fungi respond to climate warming and whether fungi, in turn, affect carbon stability of tundra. In a 2‐year winter soil warming experiment of 2°C by snow fences, we investigated responses of fungal communities to warming in the active layer of an Alaskan tundra. Although fungal community composition, revealed by the 28S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, remained unchanged ( p > .05), fungal functional gene composition, revealed by a microarray named GeoChip, was altered ( p p p

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