Soil fungi play a fundamental role in the cycling of nutrients and tree nutrition in forests. As mycorrhizal fungi are closely associated with their host trees and provide them essential base cations and phosphorus, we hypothesize that they actively mine soil minerals and transfer their nutritive content to their host. Therefore, mycorrhizal fungi are expected to be important colonizers of soil mineral surfaces relative to other fungal trophic guilds. To test this hypothesis, 50 μm nylon mesh bags were filled with three different mineral types (i.e. calcite, apatite and obsidian) and buried in the same soil colonized by three forest stands (i.e. beech, Corsican pine and coppice with standards). After an in situ incubation period of 29 months in the topsoil, mineral dissolution was detectable in the mesh bags, and the analysis of the fungal communities was therefore undertaken. Minerals presented a lower fungal biomass than the surrounding bulk soil and no difference between the three mineral types tested was observed. The high-throughput sequencing (HTS) approach showed that the fungal communities differed among the three forest stands, but in each case, mineral associated fungal taxa differed significantly from those in the bulk soil. To a lesser extent, fungal communities further varied between the three mineral types. Overall, trophic inference analyses suggested that two groups of plant-associated fungi, namely the ectomycorrhizal and endophytic fungi, were the major fungal mineral colonizers. Saprophytes also appeared significantly enriched on minerals comparatively to the surrounding bulk soil. Together, our data reveal at local scale that the mineral-associated fungal communities are first determined by the forest plant cover and then by the type of mineral.

土壤真菌在森林中养分循环和树木营养方面发挥着重要作用。由于菌根真菌与其寄主树木密切相关，并为它们提供必需的碱阳离子和磷，我们假设它们积极开采土壤矿物质并将其营养成分转移到寄主。因此，相对于其他真菌营养类群，菌根真菌有望成为土壤矿物表面的重要定植者。为了验证这一假设，50 μm 尼龙网袋装满了三种不同的矿物类型（即方解石、磷灰石和黑曜石），并埋在由三个林分（即山毛榉、科西嘉松和符合标准的矮林）定植的同一土壤中。后在原位表土中的潜伏期为 29 个月，可在网袋中检测到矿物质溶解，因此对真菌群落进行了分析。与周围的大块土壤相比，矿物质呈现出较低的真菌生物量，并且未观察到测试的三种矿物质类型之间的差异。高通量测序 (HTS) 方法表明，三个林分之间的真菌群落不同，但在每种情况下，矿物相关的真菌类群与大块土壤中的真菌群落显着不同。在较小程度上，三种矿物类型之间的真菌群落进一步变化。总体而言，营养推断分析表明，两组植物相关真菌，即外生菌根真菌和内生真菌，是主要的真菌矿物定植者。与周围的大块土壤相比，腐生植物似乎也显着富含矿物质。总之，我们的数据在局部范围内显示，与矿物相关的真菌群落首先由森林植物覆盖决定，然后由矿物类型决定。