LAUSR

Abstract Soil fungi are essential in nutrient cycles in forest ecosystems, however, the spatial patterns and the driving factors on its community may be different among different forest ecosystems. Here, the spatial patterns of the dominant forest soil fungi at phyla and class levels and their driving factors were investigated in the Huoditang (~22 km2) in the Qinling Mountains, China. The results indicated that Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were the dominant phyla, and Agaricomycetes, Sordariomycetes and Archaeorhizomycetes were the dominant classes in this region. The patches occupied by the dominant fungi were divided into six categories. Rozellomycota (5.58 km2) occupied the greatest area at the highest patch category, and Ascomycota (1.43 km2) was the second. However, the number of patches at the highest category occupied by Ascomycota was the most. Among the dominant fungal classes at the highest patch category, the habitat of Sordariomycetes was the greatest (4.59 km2) and Pezizomycetes occupied the greatest area (17.84 km2) at the lowest patch category. Overall, the dominant fungi showed “peak”, “bimodal”, and “multimodal” distributions in kriging interpolation maps. Variance partitioning analysis indicated that soil characteristics and topographic factors explained (p