Nutrients Availability Shapes Fungal Community Composition and Diversity in the Rare Earth Mine Tailings of Southern Jiangxi, China

The present study characterized the nutrients availability of three rare earth tailings deserted in different time stages in Southern Jiangxi of China, and revealed the influence of the soil nutrient properties on fungi composition and diversity by using an internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rRNA sequence approach. Three tailings (RS1, RS2 and RS3) and one reference soil (RS4) were sampled. Results showed that a higher levels of AN and TOC occurred in RS1 and RS4, whereas higher contents of SO2-4, TN, NO-3-N, NH+4-N and rare earth elements (REEs) existed in RS2 and RS3, suggesting a high environmental heterogeneity in the different tailings. Metagenomic analysis showed that RS1~RS4 harbored 355, 564, 366 and 507 operational taxonomic units (OTUs), respectively. Alpha diversity analysis showed that RS4, a control sample, had the highest Shannon diversity, whereas RS3, a newly formed tailings, exhibited the lowest Chao1 richness.