Abstract
The plant microbiome is likely to play a key role in the resilience of communities to the global climate change. This research analyses the culturable fungal mycobiota of Brachypodium rupestre across a sharp gradient of disturbance caused by an intense, anthropogenic fire regime. This factor has dramatic consequences for the community composition and diversity of high-altitude grasslands in the Pyrenees. Plants were sampled at six sites, and the fungal assemblages of shoots, rhizomes, and roots were characterized by culture-dependent techniques. Compared to other co-occurring grasses, B. rupestre hosted a poorer mycobiome which consisted of many rare species and a few core species that differed between aerial and belowground tissues. Recurrent burnings did not affect the diversity of the endophyte assemblages, but the percentages of infection of two core species -Omnidemptus graminis and Lachnum sp. -increased significantly. The patterns observed might be explained by (1) the capacity to survive in belowground tissues during winter and rapidly spread to the shoots when the grass starts its spring growth (O. graminis), and (2) the location in belowground tissues and its resistance to stress (Lachnum sp.). Future work should address whether the enhanced taxa have a role in the expansive success of B. rupestre in these anthropized environments.
Highlights
The study of the plant microbiome is a powerful tool that contributes to the understanding and prediction of the resilience of plant communities to global change (Vandenkoornhuyse et al, 2015)
The historical and current precipitation regime is known to play a key role in fungal endophyte composition (Lau et al, 2013; Liu et al, 2017), and its consequences in a scenario of climate change are a growing subject of study in recent years (Giauque and Hawkes, 2016; Koide et al, 2017; Slaughter et al, 2018)
We studied the fungal endophyte community of the aerial tissues of the most frequent companion species of B. rupestre in grasslands, Festuca rubra and Agrostis capillaris
Summary
The study of the plant microbiome is a powerful tool that contributes to the understanding and prediction of the resilience of plant communities to global change (Vandenkoornhuyse et al, 2015). Current research reports that for a particular ecosystem, the composition and diversity of the fungal microbiome of a plant host depends on its potential for carbon provision (plant abundance and biomass), on the fungal propagule availability, and on environmental factors, mainly climate, rather than on the taxonomy of the plant host (Higgins et al, 2014; Ranelli et al, 2015; Glynou et al, 2016; Kivlin et al, 2019). The historical and current precipitation regime is known to play a key role in fungal endophyte composition (Lau et al, 2013; Liu et al, 2017), and its consequences in a scenario of climate change are a growing subject of study in recent years (Giauque and Hawkes, 2016; Koide et al, 2017; Slaughter et al, 2018)
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