Metabarcoding-based fungal diversity on coarse and fine particulate organic matter in a first-order stream in Nova Scotia, Canada [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review]

Most streams receive substantial inputs of allochthonous organic material in the form of leaves and twigs (CPOM coarse particulate organic matter). , Mechanical and biological processing converts this into fine particulate organic matter (FPOM). Other sources of particles include flocculated dissolved matter and soil particles. Fungi are known to play a role in the CPOM conversion process, but the taxonomic affiliations of these fungi remain poorly studied. The present study seeks to shed light on the composition of fungal communities on FPOM and CPOM as assessed in a natural stream in Nova Scotia, Canada. Maple leaves were exposed in a stream for four weeks and their fungal community evaluated through pyrosequencing. Over the same period, four FPOM size fractions were collected by filtration and assessed. Particles had much lower ergosterol contents than leaves, suggesting major differences in the extent of fungal colonization. Pyrosequencing documented a total of 821 fungal operational taxonomic units (OTU), of which 726 were exclusive to particles and 47 to leaf samples. Characterizing fungal communities may shed some light on the origins and processing pathways of fine particles in streams and broadens our view of the phylogenetic composition of fungi in freshwater ecosystems. Christian Wurzbacher ( ), Felix Bärlocher ( ) Corresponding authors: [email protected] [email protected] Wurzbacher C, Grimmett IJ and Bärlocher F. How to cite this article: Metabarcoding-based fungal diversity on coarse and fine particulate 2015, :1378 organic matter in a first-order stream in Nova Scotia, Canada [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review] F1000Research 4 (doi: ) 10.12688/f1000research.7359.1 © 2015 Wurzbacher C . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver This research was supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant to FB. Grant information: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 30 Nov 2015, :1378 (doi: ) First published: 4 10.12688/f1000research.7359.1 1,2 3