Saprobic soil fungi drive many important ecosystem processes, including decomposition, and many of their effects are related to growth rate and enzymatic ability. In mycology, there has long been the implicit assumption of a trade-off between growth and enzymatic investment, which we test here using a set of filamentous fungi from the same soil. For these fungi we measured growth rate (as colony radial extension) and enzymatic repertoire (activities of four enzymes: laccase, cellobiohydrolase, leucine aminopeptidase and acid phosphatase), and explored the interaction between the traits based on phylogenetically corrected methods. Our results support the existence of a trade-off, however only for the enzymes presumably representing a larger metabolic cost (laccase and cellobiohydrolase). Our study offers new insights into potential functional complementarity within the soil fungal community in ecosystem processes, and experimentally supports an enzymatic investment/growth rate trade-off underpinning phenomena including substrate succession.

腐生土壤真菌驱动许多重要的生态系统过程，包括分解，其许多影响与生长速度和酶促能力有关。在真菌学中，长期以来一直隐含着生长和酶投入之间的权衡假设，我们在这里使用来自同一土壤的一组丝状真菌进行了测试。对于这些真菌，我们测量了生长速率（作为菌落径向延伸）和酶库（四种酶的活性：漆酶、纤维二糖水解酶、亮氨酸氨肽酶和酸性磷酸酶），并基于系统发育校正方法探索了性状之间的相互作用。我们的结果支持权衡的存在，但仅适用于可能代表较大代谢成本的酶（漆酶和纤维二糖水解酶）。我们的研究为生态系统过程中土壤真菌群落的潜在功能互补性提供了新的见解，并通过实验支持酶投资/生长率权衡的基础现象，包括底物演替。