Most wood-inhabiting fungi are assumed to be dispersed primarily by wind, with the exception of a few species involved in mutualistic relationships with insects. In this study we tested whether several species of wood-inhabiting insects can function as dispersal vectors for non-mutualistic fungi, which would indicate that wood-inhabiting fungi can benefit from targeted animal-mediated dispersal. We sampled wood-inhabiting beetles (Coleoptera) from freshly felled wood experimentally added to forests and used DNA metabarcoding to investigate the fungal DNA carried by these insects. Staphylinid beetles rarely contained fungal DNA, while Endomychus coccineus, Glischrochilus hortensis and Glischrochilus quadripunctatus frequently carried fungal DNA with a composition specific to the insect taxon. A large proportion of the obtained fungal sequences (34%) represented decomposer fungi, including well-known wood-decay fungi such as Fomitopsis pinicola, Fomes fomentarius, Trichaptum abietinum and Trametes versicolor. Scanning electron microscopy further showed that some of the fungal material was carried as spores or yeast cells on the insect exoskeletons. Our results suggest that insect-vectored dispersal is of broader importance to wood-inhabiting fungi than previously assumed.
Jacobsen_Pool1_forward_reads
Bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (forward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 103 samples (Pool1) of wood-inhabiting insects.
NG-9365_Rannveig1_lib117480_4476_2_1.fastq.bz2
Jacobsen_Pool1_backward_reads
Bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (backward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 103 samples (Pool1) of wood-inhabiting insects.
NG-9365_Rannveig1_lib117480_4476_2_2.fastq.bz2
Jacobsen_mapping_file_DNA
Excel-file with tag/mid (molecular identifier) sequences, ITS-sequences, sample IDs for tags/mids and lists of repetitions and negatives.
Jacobsen_OTU_table_Fungal_Ecology
OTU-table with taxonomic annotation for OTUs and information on insect samples.
Jacobsen_Pool2_forward_reads_part1
First half of the bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (forward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 98 samples (Pool2) of wood-inhabiting insects. Split with HJSplit as recommended by Dryad (http://wiki.datadryad.org/Large_File_Transfer).
NG-9365_Rannveig2_lib117481_4476_2_1.fastq.bz2.001
Jacobsen_Pool2_forward_reads_part2
Second half of the bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (forward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 98 samples (Pool2) of wood-inhabiting insects. Split with HJSplit as recommended by Dryad (http://wiki.datadryad.org/Large_File_Transfer).
NG-9365_Rannveig2_lib117481_4476_2_1.fastq.bz2.002
Jacobsen_Pool2_backward_reads_part1
First half of the bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (backward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 98 samples (Pool2) of wood-inhabiting insects. Split with HJSplit as recommended by Dryad (http://wiki.datadryad.org/Large_File_Transfer).
NG-9365_Rannveig2_lib117481_4476_2_2.fastq.bz2.001
Jacobsen_Pool2_backward_reads_part2
Second half of the bzip-compressed fastq-file containing raw sequences (backward reads) from Illumina HiSeq of pooled fungal DNA extracted from 98 samples (Pool2) of wood-inhabiting insects. Split with HJSplit as recommended by Dryad (http://wiki.datadryad.org/Large_File_Transfer).
NG-9365_Rannveig2_lib117481_4476_2_2.fastq.bz2.002
Rep_seqs_OTUs_scata_10k
Representative sequences for OTUs as clustered by Scata (https://scata.mykopat.slu.se/) in subsampled dataset (max 10k sequences from each insect sample).
Rep_seqs_clusters_scata_10k.fas