Author contributions:
J. Geml, E.R. Nouhra, F. Lutzoni, and A.E. Arnold designed the research
and selected sampling sites. J. Geml, E.R. Nouhra, F. Lutzoni, A.E.
Arnold, A. Ibáñez and L.N. Morgado performed the fieldwork. J. Geml and
T.A. Semenova-Nelsen performed the labwork. J. Geml completed the
bioinformatics and the statistical analyses, to which O. Grau and L.N.
Morgado contributed R scripts. B. Hegyi prepared the maps for Figures
S1-3. J. Geml wrote the first draft of the paper and all authors
contributed to the revisions of the manuscript that resulted in the
first submitted version.
Table 1. Proportion of variation (%) in fungal community composition
explained by elevational forest type (categorical) and continuous
environmental variables calculated independently with permutational
multivariate analysis of variance, based on the fungal community matrix.
Significant results are in bold. Climatic and edaphic variables that
remained significant in the final composite model (without elevation)
for each fungal group are indicated by asterisk (*).
Fig. 1. Generalized non-metric multidimensional scaling (GNMDS)
ordination plots of fungal communities in the sampled elevational forest
types of the three regions based on Hellinger-transformed data, with
elevation displayed as isolines. Localities and descriptions of the
sampling sites are given in Table S1. Vectors of environmental variables
with significant correlation with ordination axes are displayed.
Lowland, lower montane and upper montane forest sites are indicated with
light grey, dark grey, and black symbols, respectively. Abbreviations:
MAT = mean annual temperature, MAP = mean annual precipitation, OM =
soil organic matter content, N = soil nitrogen content, P = soil
phosphorus content.
Fig. 2. Generalized non-metric multidimensional scaling (GNMDS)
ordination plots of fungal functional groups in the sampled elevational
forest types based on Hellinger-transformed data, with elevation
displayed as isolines. Vectors of environmental variables and taxonomic
orders with significant correlation with ordination axes are displayed.
Lowland, lower montane and upper montane forest sites are indicated with
light grey, dark grey, and black symbols, respectively. Abbreviations:
MAT = mean annual temperature, MAP = mean annual precipitation, OM =
soil organic matter content, N = soil nitrogen content, P = soil
phosphorus content.
Fig. 3. Comparison of total fungal richness and richness of functional
groups across the elevational forest types in the three sampled
geographic regions. Means were compared using ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD
tests, with letters denoting significant differences (p< 0.05). Abbreviations: LL = lowland forest, LM = lower
montane forest, UM = upper montane forest. Forest types are described in
detail in the text.
Fig. 4. Shared and exclusive OTUs across the three sampled geographic
regions based on the rarefied Pantropical dataset.