Factors driving the distribution and diversity of protistan plant pathogens in grasslands and forests of the Biodiversity Exploratories (PATHOGEN)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Bonkowski
• Subject Area: Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology ; Ecology of Land Use ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 325199846

• Final Report Year: 2021

Final Report Abstract

We provide here a baseline of the diversity and distribution of soil oomycetes, classified by lifestyles (biotrophy, hemibiotrophy and saprotrophy), and of cercozoan/endomyxan, classified by trophic guilds (bacterivory, eukaryvory, omnivory and plant parasites). In Oomycetes, we found a majority of hemibiotrophic plant pathogens, which are parasites spending part of their life cycle as saprotrophs after the death of the host. For Cercozoa/Endomyxa, our study surprisingly showed that endomyxan plant parasites of worldwide importance (Phytomyxea) were absent from forests, but were responsive to anthropogenic land-use intensification in grasslands. We found drastic differences in protistan community composition between grassland and forest. In forest, relative abundances of cercozoan bacterivores/eukaryvores and of oomycete obligate biotrophs/hemibiotrophs differed between regions and showed opposite responses to edaphic conditions and human-induced management intensification, suggesting different ecological requirements for these two functional guilds.

Publications

• (2018) Soil protists: a fertile frontier in soil biology research. FEMS Microbiology Reviews 42: 293-323
  Geisen S, Mitchell EAD, Adl S, Bonkowski M, Dunthorn M, Ekelund F, Fernández LD, Jousset A, Krashevska V, Singer D, Spiegel FW, Walochnik J, Lara E
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuy006)
• 2019. Metatranscriptomics reaveal unsuspected protistan diversity in leaf litter across temperate beech forests, with Amoebozoa the dominating lineage. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 95:fiz142
  Voss C, Fiore-Donno AM, Guerreiro MA, Peršoh D & Bonkowski M
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiz142)
• 2019. The protists in soil – a token of untold eukaryotic diversity. In: Modern Soil Microbiology, Eds: van Elsas JD, Trevors JT, Soares Rosado A & Nannipieri P., pp. 125-140
  Bonkowski M, Dumack K & Fiore-Donno AM
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429059186-8)
• (2020) Contrasting Responses of Protistan Plant Parasites and Phagotrophs to Ecosystems, Land Management and Soil Properties. Frontiers in Microbiology 11: 1823
  Fiore-Donno AM, Richter-Heitmann T & Bonkowski M
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01823)
• (2020) Land-use intensity alters networks between biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117: 28140-28149
  Felipe-Lucia MR, Soliveres S, Penone C, Fischer M, Ammer C, Boch S, Boeddinghaus RS, Bonkowski M, Buscot F, Fiore-Donno AM, Frank K, Goldmann K, Gossner MM, Hölzel N, Jochum M, Kandeler E, Klaus VH, Kleinebecker T, Leimer S, Manning P, Oelmann Y, Saiz H, Schall P, Schloter M, Schöning I, Schrumpf M, Solly EF, Stempfhuber B, Weisser WW, Wilcke W, Wubet T, Allan E
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016210117)
• 2020. Making sense of environmental sequencing data: ecologically important functional traits of the protistan groups Cercozoa and Endomyxa (Rhizaria). Mol Ecol Res 20:398-403
  Dumack K, Fiore-Donno AM, Bass D & Bonkowski M
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13112)
• (2021) Contrasting responses of above- and belowground diversity to multiple components of land-use intensity. Nature Communications 12: 3918
  Le Provost G, Thiele J, Westphal C, Penone C, Allan E, Neyret M, van der Plas F, Ayasse M, Bardgett RD, Birkhofer K, Boch S, Bonkowski M, Buscot F, Feldhaar H, Gaulton R, Goldmann K, Gossner MM, Klaus VH, Kleinebecker T, Krauss J, Renner S, Scherreiks P, Sikorski J, Baulechner D, Blüthgen N, Bolliger R, Börschig C, Busch V, Chisté M, Fiore-Donno AM, Fischer M, Arndt H, Hoelzel N, John K, Jung K, Lange M, Marzini C, Overmann J, Paŝalić E, Perović DJ, Prati D, Schäfer D, Schöning I, Schrumpf M, Sonnemann I, Steffan-Dewenter I, Tschapka M, Türke M, Vogt J, Wehner K, Weiner C, Weisser W, Wells K, Werner M, Wolters V, Wubet T, Wurst S, Zaitsev AS, Manning P
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23931-1)
• (2021) Different community compositions between obligate and facultative oomycete plant parasites in a landscape-scale metabarcoding survey. Biology and Fertility of Soils 57: 245-256
  Fiore-Donno AM & Bonkowski M
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01519-z)