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. 2019 Mar 29;9:5377. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-41357-0

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© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Types of biomechanical activity. HIM (a and b) and SEM (c and d) imagery showing examples for biological inputs and biomechanical weathering in granular samples deployed in the subhumid (a–c; Catalina mixed conifer forest) and humid (d; Calhoun mixed hardwood-pine forest) field sites. Examples include (a) distinct fungal structural units with hyphal (Hyp) growth along the edges of a basaltic (Bs) grain where fungi exhibited unique surface morphologies at microscale resolutions. (b) Fungal hyphae interacting with biotite (Bt) mica from granite samples including hyphal growth between the interlayer sheets of biotite along the grain edge that represents a form of biomechanical weathering. (c) A fungal hypha (Hyp) also penetrated a surface layer sheet of biotite (Bt) as observed in secondary electron images. (d) Fungal-mineral interactions were also imaged for the Calhoun mixed hardwood-pine forest including a hypha adhered across and along the edge of a basaltic grain. The fungal-mineral interface provided potential evidence for hyphal tunneling or an abiotic weathering feature enhanced by contact with the fungal hypha along the grain edge.