Samarasinghe H, Lu Y, Aljohani R, Al-Amad A, Yoell H, Xu J. Global patterns in culturable soil yeast diversity.
iScience 2021;
24:103098. [PMID:
34622153 PMCID:
PMC8479693 DOI:
10.1016/j.isci.2021.103098]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2021] [Revised: 08/09/2021] [Accepted: 09/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Yeasts, broadly defined as unicellular fungi, fulfill essential roles in soil ecosystems as decomposers and nutrition sources for fellow soil-dwellers. Broad-scale investigations of soil yeasts pose a methodological challenge as metagenomics are of limited use for identifying this group of fungi. Here we characterize global soil yeast diversity using fungal DNA barcoding on 1473 yeasts cultured from 3826 soil samples obtained from nine countries in six continents. We identify mean annual precipitation and international air travel as two significant correlates with soil yeast community structure and composition worldwide. Evidence for anthropogenic influences on soil yeast communities, directly via travel and indirectly via altered rainfall patterns resulting from climate change, is concerning as we found common infectious yeasts frequently distributed in soil in several countries. Our discovery of 41 putative novel species highlights the continued need for culture-based studies to advance our knowledge of environmental yeast diversity.
Mean annual rainfall is a positive predictor of global soil yeast diversity
International travel predicts number of shared yeast species between countries
41 novel yeast species were discovered from soils in eight countries
Continued culture-based studies are needed to investigate soil yeast populations
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