Truffle Species Strongly Shapes its Surrounding Soil Mycobiota in a Pinus Armandii Forest

Abstract Purpose: Truffles contribute to crucial dynamics in the soil systems, being involved in plentiful ecological functions important for ecosystems. Despite this, the interactions between truffles and surrounding mycobiota remain unknown. Here, we aimed to shed light on how much truffle species could affect their surrounding soil mycobiota. Methods: Using traditional chemical analysis and ITS Illumina sequencing, we compared soil nutrients and the mycobiota in soil, gleba and peridium of the two truffle species, Tuber indicum (Ti) and T. pseudohimalayense (Tp), inhabiting the same Pinus armandii forest in southwestern China.Result: Tp soil was more acidic and had higher nutrients (total C, N contents) than Ti soil. Fungal richness and diversity of ascomata tissues and surrounding soils were significantly higher in Tp than in Ti. Truffle species recruited unique soil mycobiota around its ascomata: in Ti soil, fungal taxa including Suillus, Alternaria, Phacidium, Mycosphaerella, Halokirschsteiniothelia, Pseudogymnoascus were abundant while in Tp soil the species of Melanophyllum, Inocybe, Rhizopogon, Rhacidium, and Lecanicillium showed higher abundances. Three dissimilarity tests including adonis, anosim and mrpp showed the differences of fungal community structure between the truffle and their surrounding soil was stronger in Tp than in Ti, and such differences extended to truffle tissues (peridium and gleba). Redundancy analysis further demonstrated that relationships between soil fungal taxa and soil properties had changed from negative (Tp) to positive (Ti) and shifted from a moisture-driving (Tp) to a total N-driving (Ti). Conclusion: Overall, our results showed that the different interactions between truffle and soil system although the causative peculiarity of these associations needs to be further studied.