BELongDead – Fungal Functional Diversity – Halle/Zittau/Grafenau II – Structural and functional diversity of fungi and bacteria in deadwood

Compared to the previous projects FunWood I-II, which was largely concerned with the influence of forest management on microbial diversity in existing decomposing deadwood under field conditions, we are now shifting our focus to an experimental platform. Das BELongDead experiment was initiated in 2008 under the leadership of Prof. Dr. E.D. Schulze (MPI Biogeochemistry Jena) with the aim of investigating the influence of the surrounding habitat on deadwood and its decomposition processes. Another focus is on the long-term observation of the colonisation of the deadwood logs by a wide variety of organisms.

The aim is to investigate to what extent I) the surrounding ecosystem influences deadwood decomposition, II) how deadwood colonisation occurs and III) how microorganisms control deadwood decomposition and thus influence ecosystem processes such as nutrient turnover. BELongDead allows us to study the influence of land use in the form of forest management on a standardised set of deadwood (13 different tree species of the same size and decomposition onset), evenly distributed in 3 replicates in the 3 exploratories and in 3×3 differently managed plots each.

The aim of our project is to combine state-of-the-art molecular biological methods with classical fruiting body mapping and spore collections to I) determine the type and quantity of wood decomposition and different forest management aspects, II) observe and study distribution and succession patterns of fungi over time, III) determine fungal activity at the transcriptome and enzyme levels and correlate these results with process data, IV) determine resulting changes in wood chemistry, V) determine the influence of functionally different bacteria on fungal diversity, and VI) ultimately identify key species in these complex processes.