Soil Saprotrophic Microfungi Associated with Roots of Calamagrostis epigeios on an Abandoned Deposit of Toxic Waste from Smelter Factory Processing Pyrite Raw Materials.

Saprotrophic microfungi associated with roots of Calamagrostis epigeios growing in industrial waste contaminated with high concentrations of heavy metals (manganese, iron, zinc) were isolated on three different media. The isolates were obtained from three plots colonized by plant cenoses, representing three different succession series of plant cover: initial, intermediate, and advanced. A total of 60 species of saprotrophic microfungi were found in the roots during three samplings. In addition, unidentified dark and white sterile mycelia were frequently isolated. Trichoderma koningii was frequent in the roots formed under the advanced phytocenose. The abundance of dark sterile mycelium gradually decreased with progressing succession of the plant cover. Chrysosporium merdarium was rarely observed in the roots under the intermediate and advanced plant cenoses. Multivariate redundancy analysis showed that the effect of succession stage of phytocenoses on incidence of saprotrophic microfungi in mycocenoses present in roots was statistically significant. When the similarity of root mycocenoses of the three plots was studied using the similarity coefficients, the results proved that the similarities between the initial and intermediate or intermediate and advanced mycocenoses were higher than that between the initial and advanced mycocenoses. This corresponds to a different speed of succession of the mycocenoses. The results suggest that the dark sterile mycelia, abundant at slowly developing plots, play a dominant role during the first stages of succession where the plant cover is poor.