Drying shapes the ecological niche of aquatic fungi with implications on ecosystem functioning

Fungi are among the most abundant and diverse organisms on Earth and play pivotal roles in global carbon processing, nutrient cycling and food webs. Despite their abundant and functional importance, little is known about the patterns and mechanisms governing their community composition in intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams, which are the most common fluvial ecosystems globally. Thus far, it is known that aquatic fungi have evolved various life-history strategies and functional adaptations to cope with drying. Nevertheless, some of these adaptations have a metabolic cost and trade-offs between growth, reproduction and dispersion that may affect ecosystem functioning. Thus, understanding their eco-logical strategies along a gradient of drying is crucial to assess how species will respond to global change and to identify meaningful taxa to maintain ecosystem functions. By combining in situ hydrological information with a niche-based ap-proach, we analysed the role of drying in explaining the spatial segregation of fungal species, and we determined their specialization and affinity over a gradient of drying. In addition, we estimated whether species niches are good predic-tors of two key ecosystem processes: organic matter decomposition and fungal biomass accrual. Overall, we found that annual drying duration and frequency were the most influential variables upon species niche differentiation across the 15 studied streams. Our cluster analysis identified four drying niche-based groups with contrasting distributions and re-sponses over the drying gradient: drying-sensitive, partly tolerant to drying, generalist, and drying-resistant specialist. In addition, we found that species belonging to the drying specialist group showed a weak contribution to both ecosystem processes, suggesting trade-offs between drying resistance strategies and the energy invested in growth. Taken together, our results suggest that increased water scarcity may jeopardise the capacity of aquatic fungi to guarantee ecosystem functioning and to maintain biogeochemical cycles despite their ability to cope with drying.

Automated summary

Fungi in intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams have different strategies and adaptations to cope with drying, but these adaptations may have trade-offs that affect ecosystem functioning. This study found that drying duration and frequency were the most influential variables in determining fungal species differentiation. The research also identified four drying niche-based groups with different responses to drying. Furthermore, the study showed that species in the drying specialist group had a weak contribution to ecosystem processes, indicating trade-offs between drying resistance and growth energy.