Abstract
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form intimate associations with the roots of about 85% of all terrestrial plants, and can greatly increase a plant’s uptake of soil nutrients and have been shown to influence plant diversity in several ecosystems. A lot of studies have reported the effect of arbuscular mycorrhizas on plant density, species diversity, richness and productivity in desert herbland in Gurbantonggut desert, China. Here, we conduct a mycorrhizal functional study by suppressing AM fungi by applying the fungicide benomyl as a soil drench in soil cores and field in-situ experiment. The mycorrhiza-responsiveness of the dominant species Erodium oxyrrhynchum is assessed in intact soil cores containing the indigenous AM fungi. The soil-cores experiment displayed E. oxyrrhynchum to have a significant positive shoot and root growth response, and this is in response to the abundance of the indigenous AM fungal colonisation. The field experiment indicates the total aboveground dry biomass is negatively influenced by the suppression of AM fungi, though, no significant effect produced in the dominant and common plant species. The fungal suppression also affected density, species diversity and richness. The density of non-mycorrhizal plant Alyssum linifolium increases significantly in the treatment of suppressed AM fungi. The spore density decreases significantly in benomyl-treated plots. Our results showed that AM fungi were very important in desert ecosystem for the maintaining of plant biodiversity, richness and productivity.
Highlights
In the responsiveness of dominant plant E. oxyrrhynchum test with field cores, root colonization was significantly reduced when cores were treated with benomyl (Table 1)
Growth of the dominant was significant decreased by reduction in root colonization in benomyl-treated cores
Mycorrhizal colonization of the dominant species E. oxyrrhynchum was significant reduced in benomyl-treated plots (8.58 %) comparing to these treated with water (36.17%)
Summary
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can form intimate associations with the roots of about 85% of all terrestrial plants, and can greatly increase a plant’s uptake of soil nutrients, especially phosphorus (Smith and Read, 2008). Heijden et al (1998) shows that belowground diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is a major factor contributing to the maintenance of plant biodiversity and to ecosystem functioning. Several studies have found that ecosystem processes such as primary productivity are linked to species diversity (Tilman et al, 1996, 1997; Klironomos et al, 2000; Jing et al, 2015; Fessel et al, 2016). While increasing species richness has been shown to increase primary productivity, species identity and functional group richness are important factors controlling productivity (Tilman et al, 1997; Wilsey and Potvin, 2000). Some resolution to the question of whether increased productivity is a function of species identity or diversity has been offered by Klironomos et al (2000) and Wilsey and Potvin (2000)
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