Minamiosawa, where sclerotia were not detected. Second, we combined this information with ectomycorrhizal fungal abundance, defined as T-RFLP peak height, in
soil, sclerotia, and mesofauna samples.
In Fig. 3.19, the largest square in the background represents the soil, the yellow
box represents the mesofauna, in this case Acari and Collembola, the green oval
represents ectomycorrhizal fungi, and the black box represents sclerotia. In the
leftmost part of Fig. 3.19, the larger black box indicates that sclerotia are abundant.
At these sites, with pH < 4, mesofaunal abundance was relatively low, presumably
due to soil acidity. Incorporating the results in Fig. 3.17, ectomycorrhizal fungi were
detected in sclerotia samples but not in mesofauna samples such as in Chokai and
Iwaki sites; therefore the green oval does not overlap the yellow box.
In the center of Fig. 3.19, showing sites where soil pH ranged from 4 to 5, such as
in Akita and Nagano, ectomycorrhizal fungi were detected from both sclerotia and
mesofauna samples. We inferred that under these conditions, sclerotia had only
begun to form because the abundance of sclerotia was relatively low and they
were small in diameter. A larger number of mesofauna were collected than at sites
Fig. 3.16 Ectomycorrhizal fungi in soil, sclerotia (not found), and mesofauna samples at
Minamiosawa based on T-RFLP peaks (Amasya 2015)
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A. Amasya and K. Narisawa