Articles | Volume 26, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/we-26-47-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/we-26-47-2026
Standard article
 | 
04 Mar 2026
Standard article |  | 04 Mar 2026

Decoding fungal communities: ITS extraction matters more than ASVs vs. OTUs

Gabriele Tosadori and Jason Bosch

Cited articles

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Aronesty, E.: Comparison of sequencing utility programs, Open Bioinforma. J., 7, 1–8, https://doi.org/10.2174/1875036201307010001, 2013. 
Bengtsson-Palme, J., Ryberg, M., Hartmann, M., Branco, S., Wang, Z., Godhe, A., De Wit, P., Sánchez-García, M., Ebersberger, I., de Sousa, F., Amend, A. S., Jumpponen, A., Unterseher, M., Kristiansson, E., Abarenkov, K., Bertrand, Y. J. K., Sanli, K., Eriksson, K. M., Vik, U., Veldre, V., and Nilsson, R. H.: Improved software detection and extraction of ITS1 and ITS2 from ribosomal ITS sequences of fungi and other eukaryotes for analysis of environmental sequencing data, Methods Ecol. Evol., https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12073, 2013. 
Blaalid, R., Kumar, S., Nilsson, R. H., Abarenkov, K., Kirk, P. M., and Kauserud, H.: ITS1 versus ITS2 as DNA metabarcodes for fungi, Mol. Ecol. Resour., 13, 218–224, https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.12065, 2013. 
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Short summary

Fungal ecology is often studied using short fragments of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These DNA fragments can approximate fungal species using different computational methods but the best choice is not clear. We analysed large, simulated fungal communities to overcome the limitations of experimental work and compare different analysis workflows. Our results identify the analysis choices which give the closest match to reality. This should help guide study design in fungal ecology.

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