Amplicon-Based Profiling of Fungal Communities in Decayed Outdoor Wood Structures and Natural Logs in Tropical Singapore

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Abstrakt

Wood structures (processed wood) are increasingly incorporated into Singapore’s sustainable built environment, but their durability is challenged by biodeterioration exacerbated by the tropical climate. We collected 133 decayed wood samples from outdoor wood structures and natural logs at 15 sites including public parks, wooden buildings, and private houses. Fungal communities were characterized using ITS1 amplicon sequencing, with taxonomic assignments initially performed using the UNITE database and subsequently refined using the ITS RefSeq Targeted Loci database, reducing inconclusive genus-level identifications from 55.8% to 44.0%. All but one site exhibited substantial local-scale heterogeneity in fungal communities, with between-site Bray–Curtis dissimilarities ranging from 0.61 to 1.0, demonstrating marked compositional differences among sampling sites, with median within-site Bray–Curtis dissimilarities ranging from 0.60 to 0.98, and samples collected from the same pieces of processed wood or natural log commonly harboring distinct fungal communities. The sole exception was a residential site dominated by Trichaptum byssogenum. PERMANOVA indicated that sampling location and substrate type explained 25.1% and 4.6% of the variation in fungal community composition, respectively, suggesting weak influence of wood treatment. One ascomycete and two basidiomycete isolates were further evaluated for their wood-decaying capacity in vitro. Remarkably, the ascomycete Paecilomyces maximus alone was capable of degrading angsana, balau, spruce, and rubberwood blocks, highlighting the potentially important role of ascomycetes as active primary saprotrophs in wood decomposition, consistent with their dominant presence in our study (eight of the nine widely dominant genera present in four–seven sites). Collectively, these findings reveal the complexity and heterogeneity of tropical wood biodeterioration and provide insights relevant to wood processing, durability assessment, and the management of timber structures in tropical environments.

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