Soil fungal community development in a high Arctic glacier foreland follows a directional replacement model, with a mid-successional diversity maximum.

Directional replacement and directional non-replacement models are two alternative paradigms for community development in primary successional environments. The first model emphasizes turnover in species between early and late successional niches. The second emphasizes accumulation of additional diversity over time. To test whether the development of soil fungal communities in the foreland of an Arctic glacier conforms to either of these models, we collected samples from the Midtre Lovénbreen Glacier, Svalbard, along a soil successional series spanning >80 years. Soil DNA was extracted, and fungal ITS1 region was amplified and sequenced on an Illumina Miseq. There was a progressive change in community composition in the soil fungal community, with greatest fungal OTU richness in the Mid Stage (50-80 years). A nestedness analysis showed that the Early Stage (20-50 years) and the Late Stage (>80 years) fungal communities were nested within the Mid Stage communities. These results imply that fungal community development in this glacier succession follows a directional replacement model. Soil development processes may initially be important in facilitating arrival of additional fungal species, to give a mid-successional diversity maximum that contains both early- and late-successional fungi. Competition may then decrease the overall diversity due to the loss of early successional species.