Björn D. Lindahl

TL;DR: All fungal species represented by at least two ITS sequences in the international nucleotide sequence databases are now given a unique, stable name of the accession number type, and the term ‘species hypothesis’ (SH) is introduced for the taxa discovered in clustering on different similarity thresholds.

TL;DR: Three new primers are described - fITS7, gITS7 and fITS9 - which may be used to amplify the fungal ITS2 region by targeting sites in the 5.8S encoding gene and yielded more diverse amplicon communities than the ITS1f primer.

TL;DR: It is shown that 50 to 70% of stored carbon in a chronosequence of boreal forested islands derives from roots and root-associated microorganisms, suggesting an alternative mechanism for the accumulation of organic matter in boreal forests during succession in the long-term absence of disturbance.

TL;DR: Observations show that the degrading and nutrient-mobilizing components of the fungal community are spatially separated, which has important implications for biogeochemical studies of boreal forest ecosystems.

TL;DR: Taking advantage of the collective experience of six research groups, the different stages involved in fungal community analysis are reviewed, from field sampling via laboratory procedures to bioinformatics and data interpretation, and potential pitfalls, alternatives, and solutions are discussed.