Sterile centrifuge tubes

To harvest the larvae the roll of paper was carefully removed and discarded from each tube. The remaining fluid containing the larvae was then combined into 50 ml sterile centrifuge tubes (Corning, New York, USA) and centrifuged at 2000 g for 5 min with the brake off. Forty-five milliliters of supernatant was then discarded and the larvae were resuspended in sterile water. This washing process was performed three times before resuspension of the larvae in 2 ml of sterile water in a 15-ml conical tube. Larval yields were calculated by examining the number of larvae in 5 × 20 µl aliquots of resuspended larval solution at × 40 magnification.

Between October and November 2011, soil samples were collected from Bird Island (54.0089°S, 38.0662°W), Signy Island (60.7107°S, 45.5849°W) and Léonie Island (67.5984°S, 68.3561°W) in the sub‐Antarctic, low maritime and high maritime Antarctic respectively. In order to achieve consistency between islands, soil was collected from under populations of co‐occurring Deschampsia antarctica Desv. and Colobanthus quitensis (Kunth) Bartl., the only two native vascular plant species that occur in Antarctica. On each island, 50 ml sterile centrifuge tubes (Corning Inc, Corning, NY, USA) were used to collect soil samples by hammering them directly into the vertical walls of three pits at three depths (2, 4 and 8 cm). Thus, a total of 27 soil samples were collected from across the three islands. The three pits were a maximum of 1 km apart on each island, with an average distance of 311 m separating them. The soil, kept on ice after collection and frozen at −80 °C within 5 h, was freeze dried to preserve fungal nucleotides.