Fungal Abundance in Douglas-fir Needles from Common Garden Experiments

More than 2,500 coastal Douglas-fir trees from 30 populations were sampled across multiple common gardens over three years to quantify foliar fungal loads. The dataset, created by Oregon State University and last updated in 2026, uses a hamPCR metabarcoding technique to measure abundance indices for fungal taxa, bypassing issues of compositional data. It captures interactions between host tree ecotype, garden environment, and annual variation on fungal community assembly.

Use Cases

• Modeling the effect of host genotype (ecotype) on fungal pathogen abundance based on coastal vs. montane population comparisons.
• Analyzing environmental filters on fungal communities based on garden location (coastal vs. montane) and year-to-year variation.
• Investigating differential responses of pathogenic vs. mutualistic fungi to host and environmental factors as described in the results.
• Testing multivariate generalized linear models for community data that incorporates taxon-specific abundance indices.

Strengths

• Sampling scale includes more than 2,500 individual trees.
• Longitudinal design includes three consecutive years of sampling at paired sites to account for annual variation.
• Method uses hamPCR to generate abundance indices, addressing limitations of purely compositional sequencing data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• License is listed as 'Copyright Undetermined', requiring careful review before use.

Provenance

Source

Oregon State University

Collection Method

Needles were sampled from trees belonging to 30 populations grown in common gardens, with fungal load quantified via adapted hamPCR metabarcoding.

Time Range

Covers three consecutive years of sampling, as mentioned in the description.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-22 03:17:06; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Samples from coastal and montane common gardens in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii.