ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
A trait-based understanding of wood decomposition by fungi.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Taxonomic insights and preliminary enzyme assays of Rhytidhysteron species (Hysteriales, Hysteriaceae) from litter layer in the Yuan Jiang savanna, China.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Chronic Nitrogen Deposition Alters Diazotrophic Community Composition, Reduces Biological Nitrogen Fixation, and Restructures Fungal-Diazotroph CO-Occurrence Networks in Deadwood.Microbial ecology · 2026Article
- Occupancy as a key attribute linking saprotrophic fungi to soil carbon decomposition.National science review · 2026Article
- Biocalorimetry for the biotechnological use of natural and synthetic macromolecules.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2026Review
- Nonenergy Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS): Assessing Durability of Nongaseous Carbon Products Across Terrestrial Storage Fates.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- From beginning to end: the synecology of tree-killing bark beetles, fungi, and trees.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Gene duplication, horizontal gene transfer, and trait trade-offs drive evolution of postfire resource acquisition in pyrophilous fungi.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Taxonomy and phylogeny of saprobic Sordariomycetes (Ascomycota) from woody litter in terrestrial ecosystems of Yunnan Province, China.MycoKeys · 2026Article
- Decoupling species richness and interaction frequency reveals how fungal interactions regulate wood decomposition.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Aligning global mercury mitigation with climate action.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Repeated measures of decaying wood reveal the success and influence of fungal wood endophytes.mSystems · 2025Article
- Cascading Effects of Plant Hormone-induced Trait Shifts in Alnus rubra on Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecosystem Function.Journal of chemical ecology · 2025Article
- Cross-kingdom comparative genomics reveal the metabolic potential of fungi for lignin turnover in deadwood.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Uncovering fungal diversity in mangroves: new records, ecological insights, and phylogenetic analysis of3 Biotech · 2025Article
- Life cycle emissions associated with vault storage of wood cleared for fire management in the Western United States.Carbon balance and management · 2025Article
- Soil Microbial Recovery to the Rubber Tree Replanting Process in Ivory Coast.Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Idiosyncratic responses to biotic and environmental filters in wood-inhabiting fungal communities.Ecology · 2025Article
- Saprotrophic Wood Decay Ability and Plant Cell Wall Degrading Enzyme System of the White Rot FungusJournal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Soil Fungal Community Diversity, Co-Occurrence Networks, and Assembly Processes under Diverse Forest Ecosystems.Microorganisms · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
As the primary decomposers of organic material in terrestrial ecosystems, fungi are critical agents of the global carbon cycle. Yet our ability to link fungal community composition to ecosystem functioning is constrained by a limited understanding of the factors accounting for different wood decomposition rates among fungi. Here we examine which traits best explain fungal decomposition ability by combining detailed trait-based assays on 34 saprotrophic fungi from across North America in the laboratory with a 5-y field study comprising 1,582 fungi isolated from 74 decomposing logs. Fungal growth rate (hyphal extension rate) was the strongest single predictor of fungal-mediated wood decomposition rate under laboratory conditions, and accounted for up to 27% of the in situ variation in decomposition in the field. At the individual level, decomposition rate was negatively correlated with moisture niche width (an indicator of drought stress tolerance) and with the production of nutrient-mineralizing extracellular enzymes. Together, these results suggest that decomposition rates strongly align with a dominance-tolerance life-history trade-off that was previously identified in these isolates, forming a spectrum from slow-growing, stress-tolerant fungi that are poor decomposers to fast-growing, highly competitive fungi with fast decomposition rates. Our study illustrates how an understanding of fungal trait variation could improve our predictive ability of the early and midstages of wood decay, to which our findings are most applicable. By mapping our results onto the biogeographic distribution of the dominance-tolerance trade-off across North America, we approximate broad-scale patterns in intrinsic fungal-mediated wood decomposition rates.
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