Estimating fungal niches to understand community assembly and responses to environmental change

Niches describe the conditions that organisms are able to exploit, and the concept is key to different areas of ecology. Understanding the niche characteristics of organisms can help us to explain how different elements of biodiversity are able to coexist. In this project we will study fungal niches using environmental DNA sequencing data from multiple databases and several thousand sampling locations; and complement these with further targeted sampling and data from experimental manipulations. The data will be used to estimate niche characteristics – optimal conditions, niche volumes, niche overlaps between organisms – of different fungi in relation to the abiotic and biotic environment. Based on this, we will test hypotheses about biodiversity assembly and coexistence. Fungi comprise organisms that play key functional roles in natural and anthropogenic systems. The results of this project will provide a basis for predicting how these organisms respond to changing environments.