Exchangeable cations and pH drive diversity and functionality of fungal communities in biological soil crusts from coastal sites of Victoria Land, Antarctica Fabiana Canini a, b, * ,J  ozsef Geml b, c , Luigi Paolo D'Acqui d , Laura Selbmann a, e , Silvano Onofri a , Stefano Ventura d, f , Laura Zucconi a a Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy b Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, the Netherlands c Faculty of Science, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands d Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (IRET-CNR), Sesto Fiorentino, Italy e Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA), Mycological Section, Genoa, Italy f The Italian Embassy in Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel article info Article history: Received 20 May 2019 Received in revised form 28 January 2020 Accepted 2 February 2020 Available online xxx Corresponding Editor: Petr Baldrian Keywords: DNA metabarcoding Soil fungi ITS1 Environmental filtering Functional groups Soil properties abstract Ice-free regions in coastal areas of Victoria Land, Antarctica, are patchily distributed, limited in extent and characterized by a simple vegetation of lichens and mosses, growing only for a short period during the austral summer. These organisms are associated with soil particles and microorganisms (e.g., algae, microfungi and bacteria) to make up biological soil crusts (BSCs), found worldwide in cold and/or arid and semi-arid regions, where plant growth is impaired. Despite BSCs being among the most widespread ecosystems throughout coastal ice-free areas of continental Antarctica, fungal components of these communities have received little focus. Through ITS1 DNA metabarcoding of samples from 17 sites of six different localities from 73 to 77  S, in a distance scale from 29 to 411 km among different sites, we provide insights into the diversity, community composition, and functionality of fungal communities of these peculiar ecosystems, deepening our knowledge on how they are related to different edaphic var- iables (i.e. chemical properties and texture). Although fungal richness was low (59 ± 27 OTUs per sample), we found numerous previously unsequenced, putatively unknown fungal species representing a great part of the sampled communities. Community composition was spatially auto-correlated and appeared to be driven by site-specific differences in environmental conditions, particularly edaphic factors, such as exchangeable cations and pH. These results are of particular interest, as they give a wide characterization of the parameters determining soil colonization in a such limiting environment, espe- cially in the light of global changes that are expected to deeply modify the conditions of this environment. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and British Mycological Society. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent, with the highest mean elevation on the planet and nearly all its surface is covered by ice, with an average thickness of about 2400 m on the central polar plateau of East Antarctica. Victoria Land, on the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, along a latitudinal gradient spanning 8  from Cape Adare (71  S) to Darwin Glacier (79  S), comprises multiple ecosystems with a great diversity of soil types and minimal human perturbations. McMurdo Dry Valleys, west of McMurdo Sound, in Southern Victoria Land, form the largest ice-free area in Antarctica, while in Northern Victoria Land ice-free regions mainly occur during the warmer summer months, are limited in extent and patchily distributed, and are mostly confined in coastal regions on the fringe of the continent or in isolated nunataks and mountain peaks (Barrett et al., 2006). Microorganisms are the prevalent life forms in the Antarctic soil ecosystems, more than in other continents, with species well adapted to survive and thrive in one of the most hostile environments on Earth (Nienow and * Corresponding author. Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, Uni- versity of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy. E-mail address: canini.fabiana@unitus.it (F. Canini). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Fungal Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/funeco https://doi.org/10.1016/j.funeco.2020.100923 1754-5048/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd and British Mycological Society. All rights reserved. Fungal Ecology 45 (2020) 100923