Abstract
AbstractArbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities are important to plant community productivity and diversity; however, the importance of AM fungal composition to community dynamics remains largely unknown. Specificity of plant response to different AM fungal species is a prerequisite for AM fungal composition to have an effect on plant community dynamics. We test determinants of specificity of plant response to AM fungi across six early‐ and six late‐successional tallgrass prairie plants by growing them with one of seven different AM fungal species and a non‐inoculated control. We found that late‐successional species were more responsive, and demonstrated greater specificity, toward individual AM fungal taxa than early‐successional species. There was no phylogenetic signal for plant responsiveness or specificity of plant response. Phylogenetic multiple regressions indicated that successional stage, plant growth rate, and overall responsiveness were significant predictors of fungal specificity independent of shared phylogeny. These results suggest that plant response to mycorrhizal fungi is evolutionarily labile and coevolves with plant life history. Our results also suggest that AM fungal community dynamics can be particularly important for the establishment and subsequent dynamics of late‐successional plants.
Highlights
Belowground symbionts such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can play an important role in plant community dynamics by improving plant community productivity (van der Heijden et al 1998, Vogelsang et al 2006, Bauer et al 2012)
Further results on overall plant mycorrhizal responsiveness, variance components, and plant growth across successional stages can be found in Appendix S1: Results S1, and the remainder of these results focus on the specificity of plant response to different Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal taxa across succession
We found that plant successional stage was a significant predictor of variation in mycorrhizal responsiveness among the different plant species, where late-successional plants averaged more than 10 times the variation in mycorrhizal responsiveness among the different fungal species compared to early-s uccessional plants (Appendix S1: Table S2, F1,11 = 9.3, P = 0.02)
Summary
Belowground symbionts such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can play an important role in plant community dynamics by improving plant community productivity (van der Heijden et al 1998, Vogelsang et al 2006, Bauer et al 2012). AM fungi associate with a wide variety of plants, individual plant species may vary in their responses to different fungal partners (Bever 2002, Klironomos 2003). Variation in plant response to specific fungal taxa may drive plant diversity and productivity response to manipulations of AM fungal richness (van der Heijden et al 1998, Vogelsang et al 2006, Wagg et al 2011).
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