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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, September 2002, p. 4370-4376, Vol. 68, No. 9
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.9.4370-4376.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Influence of Elevated CO₂ on the Fungal Community in a Coastal Scrub Oak Forest Soil Investigated with Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32899,¹ Dynamac Corp., Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899,² Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland 21037³

Received 22 February 2002/ Accepted 13 June 2002

Sixteen open-top chambers (diameter, 3.66 m) were established in a scrub oak habitat in central Florida where vegetation was removed in a planned burn prior to chamber installation. Eight control chambers have been continuously exposed to ambient air and eight have been continuously exposed to elevated CO₂ at twice-ambient concentration (700 ppm) for 5 years. Soil cores were collected from each chamber to examine the influence of elevated atmospheric CO₂ on the fungal community in different soil fractions. Each soil sample was physically fractionated into bulk soil, rhizosphere soil, and roots for separate analyses. Changes in relative fungal biomass were estimated by the ergosterol technique. In the bulk soil and root fractions, a significantly increased level of ergosterol was detected in the elevated CO₂ treatments relative to ambient controls. Fungal community composition was determined by terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. The specificities of different ITS primer sets were evaluated against plant and fungal species isolated from the experimental site. Changes in community composition were assessed by principal component analyses of T-RFLP profiles resolved by capillary electrophoresis. Fungal species richness, defined by the total number of terminal restriction fragments, was not significantly affected by either CO₂ treatment or soil fraction.

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