SUITMA 2005 Cairo - Mycological properties of anthropogenically transformed soils of medieval and modern urban centers
SUITMA 2005 Cairo
| This abstract is about one of the papers of the Historical sites theme of the SUITMA 2005 symposium. |
| Olga Marfenina,i | Anna E. Ivanova,i |
| Elena E. Kislova.i |
- i - Soil Biology Department, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
Urbanization is one of human impacts known from antiquity. The mycological properties of soils can offer information about ancient man-landscape interaction and related environmental changes. This preposition has been confirmed in our investigations of the occupation deposits in the medieval Russian settlements.
The investigations were held at the sites of medieval urban centres (VIII-XIV century A.D.) and in modern cities in the different climate zones at the European part of Russia.
The fungal biomass and biomass structure was performed using luminescent microscopy. The isolation of microfungi was done by soil dilution on the number of solid media and by hear-bite technique. The succession analysis without and with previously heating (45-51°C) of soil samples was used for increasing the diversity of fungal isolates.
It was established that in modern and old urban soils the mycobiota may form having properties different from those of zone fungal communities. The examined urban soils and cultural layers of ancient settlements differ from the horizons of the surrounding natural soils by a bigger rate of fungal spores in fungal biomass, higher species diversity of microscopic fungi, another species composition and dominant microfungal species, increased occurrence of some ecological and trophic fungal groups (for example, keratinophyllic fungi).
In modern and old urban soils may be noted an increased frequency of occurrence and great abundance of species, which are inherent in soils, located farther to the south, for example, the decreasing number of the species of the genus Penicillium, in general, and the increasing number of the species of the genus Aspergillus. Simultaneously, there is an increased frequency of Penicillium species that are able to grow at the elevated temperature (37°C). These differences are well expressed in northern and boreal climate conditions.
As in modern urban soils, both in settlements culture layers there are increased diversity and abundance of everytopic, ruderal species. The modern urban soils (central part of big cities) and the places of the soaring of domestic wastes in culture layers usually are characterized by the occurrence of such species as Aspergillus fumigatus, A. niger, A. flavus, Penicillium purpurogenum, etc.
In modern as well as in some ancient urban soils the presence of different groups of “health risk” microfungi (potentially pathogenic, keratinophyllic fungi) was marked. In culture layers the increasing of keratinophyllic fungi was most obvious at the sites of ancient streets and dwelling floors.
The application of rDNA analysis for comparison of the molecular properties of fungal isolates from ancient and modern urban soils don't show the differences in the ITS consequences of the strains. In general, the mycological characteristics of the occupation deposits in the excavated medieval settlements were found to be mainly similar to mycological properties of modern urban soils. These properties in occupation deposits can be interpreted as a kind of «soil mycological memory» of the ancient urban impacts.
N. B. This work was partly supported by grant N 05-04-48380a from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
