Ice-free regions in coastal areas of Victoria Land, Antarctica, are patchily distributed, limited in extent and characterized by a simple vegetation of lichens and mosses, growing only for a short period during the austral summer. These organisms are associated with soil particles and microorganisms (e.g., algae, microfungi and bacteria) to make up biological soil crusts (BSCs), found worldwide in cold and/or arid and semi-arid regions, where plant growth is impaired. Despite BSCs being among the most widespread ecosystems throughout coastal ice-free areas of continental Antarctica, fungal components of these communities have received little focus. Through ITS1 DNA metabarcoding of samples from 17 sites of six different localities from 73 to 77°S, in a distance scale from 29 to 411 km among different sites, we provide insights into the diversity, community composition, and functionality of fungal communities of these peculiar ecosystems, deepening our knowledge on how they are related to different edaphic variables (i.e. chemical properties and texture). Although fungal richness was low (59 ± 27 OTUs per sample), we found numerous previously unsequenced, putatively unknown fungal species representing a great part of the sampled communities. Community composition was spatially auto-correlated and appeared to be driven by site-specific differences in environmental conditions, particularly edaphic factors, such as exchangeable cations and pH. These results are of particular interest, as they give a wide characterization of the parameters determining soil colonization in a such limiting environment, especially in the light of global changes that are expected to deeply modify the conditions of this environment.

南极维多利亚州陆地沿海地区的无冰地区分布有限，范围有限，其特征是地衣和苔藓的简单植被，仅在南半球夏季短暂生长。这些生物与土壤颗粒和微生物（例如藻类，微真菌和细菌）相关联，构成了生物性土壤结皮（BSC），这些结皮在世界范围内的寒冷和/或干旱和半干旱地区，这些地区的植物生长受到损害。尽管BSCs是整个南极洲沿海无冰地区中分布最广泛的生态系统之一，但这些社区的真菌部分很少受到关注。通过对来自6个不同地区的17个站点的样本进行ITS1 DNA元条形码，从73到77°S，不同站点之间的距离范围为29到411 km，我们可以洞察多样性，这些特殊生态系统的群落组成和真菌群落的功能，加深了我们对它们与不同水生变量（即化学性质和质地）之间的关系的了解。尽管真菌的丰富度很低（每个样品59±27 OTU），但我们发现了许多以前未测序的，公认的未知真菌物种，它们代表了大部分采样社区。群落组成在空间上是自动相关的，并且似乎是由环境条件中特定位置的差异所驱动，特别是诸如交换性阳离子和pH之类的营养因子。这些结果特别令人感兴趣，因为它们提供了在这种有限环境中确定土壤定殖的参数的广泛表征，