Effects of organic matter and low oxygen on the mycobenthos in a coastal lagoon
Masters students Ana-Sofia Ortega-Arbulú and Monica Pichler used a mock community of Fungi to test the accuracy of the Illumina sequencing platform for determining fungal taxa based on internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions. Published in Environmental Microbiology.
10.12.2018
Using this method, they discovered that communities of benthic Fungi and other saprotrophic microbial eukaryotes grow quickly in response to nutrients, and change in community composition in response to rapid decreasing benthic oxygen concentrations. Thus showing for the first time that changing levels of nutrients and oxygen levels affect the activity and ecology of benthic marine Fungi, the 'mycobenthos'.
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