Nematophagous fungi are a group of micro fungi that are ubiquitous in nature and have been well distributed in variety of ecological habitats and environment worldwide. Their diversity and distribution in soil is mainly associated with various soil parameters, especially with soil organic matter content. This experiment is carried out to explore the biodiversity and seasonal distribution of Nematode trapping fungi from different habitats like decaying woody soil, decaying leafy soil and agricultural rhizospheric soil. For this study, periodical isolation of these fungi in the month of January 2014 and May 2014 was carried out from samples taken from various randomly selected eight locations of three different habitats. In both the season, the higher level of diversity in terms of the population density and species richness was recorded in decaying leafy soils, followed by in decaying woody soil, but in agricultural rhizospheric soil it was less. Moreover, the recorded species are evenly distributed mostly in decaying leafy soil and decaying woody soil whereas, agricultural rhizospheric soil is mainly dominated by single species i.e., A. oligospora with 30 % occurrence frequency. This is significantly correlated with variation in quantified nematode population and estimated C:N ratio of the samples of different habitats. These findings clearly indicate the role of these group of fungi in maintaining the fertility status of soil and the importance of their conservation and possible utilization in enhancing the soil health of agricultural soil.
Biodiversity, Nematode trapping fungi, Decaying leafy soil, Decaying woody soil, Nematode population, C: N Ratio
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