Idiosyncratic responses to biotic and environmental filters in wood-inhabiting fungal communities.

Quantification of different processes affecting the assembly of ecological communities remains challenging, especially in species-rich communities. While the role of environmental filtering has generally been well established, fewer studies have experimentally shown how other ecological assembly processes, such as biotic filtering, structure species-rich communities. Here, we studied the relative roles of biotic and environmental filtering in the colonization of wood-inhabiting fungi, a species-rich, highly interactive, and environment-sensitive group of species.

The role of stochasticity in fungal community assembly: explaining apparent stochasticity with field experiments.

Stochasticity is a main process in community assembly. However, experimental studies rarely target stochasticity in natural communities, and hence experimental validation of stochasticity estimates in observational studies is lacking. Here, we combine experimental and observational data to unravel the role of stochasticity in the assembly of wood-inhabiting fungi.