PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Anika Lehmann
AU  - Weishuang Zheng
AU  - Masahiro Ryo
AU  - Katharina Soutschek
AU  - Rebecca Rongstock
AU  - Stefanie Maaß
AU  - Matthias C. Rillig
TI  - Fungal traits important for soil aggregation
AID  - 10.1101/732628
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 732628
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/12/732628.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/12/732628.full
AB  - Soil health and sustainability is essential for ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Soil structure, the complex arrangement of soil into aggregates and pore spaces, is a key feature of soils under the influence of soil life. Soil biota, and among them filamentous saprobic fungi, have well-documented effects on soil aggregation. However, it is unclear what fungal properties, or traits, contribute to the overall positive effect on soil aggregation. So far, we lack a systematic investigation of a broad suite of fungal species for their trait expression and the relation of these traits to their soil aggregation capability.Here, we apply a trait-based approach to a set of 15 traits measured under standardized conditions on 31 fungal strains including Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and Mucoromycota, all isolated from the same soil.We found a spectrum of soil aggregate formation capability ranging from neutral to positive and large differences in trait expression among strains. We identified biomass density (positive effects), leucine aminopeptidase activity (negative effects) and phylogeny as important modulators of fungal aggregate formation capability. Our results point to a typical suite of traits characterizing fungi that are good soil aggregators; this could inform screening for fungi to be used in biotechnological applications, and illustrates the power of employing a trait-based approach to unravel biological mechanisms of soil aggregation, which could now be extended to other organism groups.