Mexico's Forest Fungi Hold Climate and Agriculture Clues, Study Finds
Researchers mapped soil fungal communities across 55 Mexican forest sites and discovered that rainfall, pH, and elevation shape which fungi thrive where—insights that could improve carbon storage forecasting and guide agricultural practices. The findings highlight how understudied fungi in tropical ecosystems may be critical to predicting forest resilience under climate change.
Originaltitel: Diversity and Distribution of Soil Fungi in Neotropical Mexican Forests
ABSTRACT Soil fungal diversity in the Neotropics remains poorly understood, despite growing evidence of high endemism and many undescribed taxa. Here, we analyzed the Global Soil Mycobiome dataset from 55 sites across the Mexican Neotropics, integrating community composition with alpha‐ and beta‐diversity metrics. Cluster and ordination analyses revealed eight distinct community groups largely explained by vegetation type and ecogeographic patterns. Tropical rainforests and temperate conifer forests harbored the highest richness (mean > 1500 OTUs), whereas coastal dunes showed the lowest (< 400 OTUs). Xeric shrublands, despite reduced richness, exhibited high evenness, suggesting niche differentiation under stressful conditions. Prevalence and indicator species analyses highlighted the role of ectomycorrhizal taxa in coniferous and coastal systems, soil saprotrophs in Pinus – Quercus forests, and plant pathogens in xeric shrublands, while many tropical lineages remained unclassified. Multivariate redundancy analysis identified pH, mean annual precipitation and elevation as the strongest independent drivers of fungal turnover, with soil nutrients (N, P, δ 15 N) explaining finer‐scale variation. Together, these results demonstrate that broad climatic gradients and vegetation types structure fungal communities in the northern Neotropics, while local soil properties refine community assembly. Our findings underscore the importance of tropical rainforests, temperate montane forests, and xeric shrublands as key reservoirs of soil fungal diversity, and provide a predictive framework for the conservation and monitoring of Neotropical ecosystems within initiatives such as the Soil Biodiversity Atlas of Mexico.