Research Paper Microfungal-community diversity in Zygophyllum dumosum and Hammada scoparia root zones in the northern Negev Desert Jun Yu 1, 2 , Isabella Grishkan 3 and Yosef Steinberger 1 1 The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel 2 State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China 3 Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel The soil dilution plate method was used to determine the influences of perennial shrubs on the species diversity and density of cultivable microfungal communities inhabiting the root zones of two perennial shrubs, Zygophyllum dumosum and Hammada scoparia, in the northern Negev Desert, Israel. Soil samples were collected under the canopies of shrubs and the open spaces between them (serving as control) from five depths (0–10, 10–20, 20–30, 30–40, and 40–50 cm) during the wet and dry seasons of 2010. Fifty-one species belonging to 31 genera were identified from Zygomycota, teleomorphic and anamorphic Ascomycota, including Coelomycetes. During the wet and dry seasons, 4–10 and 2–6 species were identified at different soil depths beneath perennial shrubs and in the open spaces, while the corresponding colony-forming units (CFUs) varied from 3071 to 27687 and from 3201 to 15247 g 1 dry soil. More diverse microfungal communities were collected in the vicinity of perennial shrubs compared to the open spaces during the wet season, while a reverse trend was observed during the dry season. Further study is needed to provide insights into the correlation between compounds of litter and root exudates of perennial shrubs and microfungal-community structure by a combination of molecular and physiological tools. Keywords: Soil dilution plate method / Biodiversity / Community structure / Spatio-temporal variability / Perennial shrub Received: November 27, 2011; accepted: February 29, 2012 DOI 10.1002/jobm.201100597 Introduction Soil mycobiota play an important role in ecosystems by fulfilling a series of functions that are intimately linked to the fixation of carbon in different forms and are actively involved in organic-matter decomposition and nutrient-cycling processes [6, 9, 32, 37]. Microfungi are also known to stimulate or reduce plant productivity via resource complementarities or nutrient competition, and influence plant diversity and composition through the invasion of mycorrhizal fungi and/or soil pathogens into a certain environment [36]. Alternatively, aboveground vegetation can affect factors such as soil organic carbon, pH, temperature, and moisture which regulate the activity and abundance of soil mycobiota. Greater plant taxonomic richness is, therefore, considered one of the positive stimuli to higher microfungal species diversity [2]. Although our understanding of the corre- lations between mycobiota diversity and the plant community is limited [34, 40], previous studies partly revealed the impact of certain plants on the microfungal communities in a given habitat, e.g., arable land [7, 11], grassland [2, 4, 15], and shrubland [14, 25, 30]. In reality, both aboveground vegetation and soil mycobiota are mutual beneficiaries due to interaction under certain conditions, especially in an arid ecosystem. On the one hand, Went and Stark [37] pointed out that hyphae extend the approachable areas of plant roots and Correspondence: Prof. Yosef Steinberger, The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel E-mail: Yosef.Steinberger@biu.ac.il Phone: 972-3-5318571 Fax: 972-3-7384058 Environment  Health  Techniques 390 Jun Yu et al. ß 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA,Weinheim www.jbm-journal.com J. Basic Microbiol. 2013, 53, 390–400