Back to the roots: Uncovering ectomycorrhizal communities across three major African vegetation types.

Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EcM) are critical to the health and sustainability of many African ecosystems that include EcM-associated tree species. In Sub-Saharan Africa, three major EcM-dominated vegetation types can be distinguished: the Central African Guineo-Congolian rainforests, the West African Sudanian woodlands and the East African Zambezian Miombo woodlands. While the rainforests feature humid conditions with isolated patches of EcM trees amongst predominantly arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) communities, the woodlands are characterised by drier soils and more vast continuous areas of EcM trees. We hypothesise that the isolation of EcM tree patches within the rainforest promotes a unique and potentially endemic EcM fungal community, while riparian forests found along rivers in woodland areas may serve as corridors, facilitating the spread of such rare taxa into woodland regions. In this study, we employ root tip metabarcoding combined with Species Hypothesis (SH) matching to characterise the EcM communities across these three vegetation types. Consistent with previous findings from fruit-body surveys and eDNA studies, our results show that