Distinct effects of host and neighbour tree identity on arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal fungi along a tree diversity gradient

Olga Ferlian,Nico Eisenhauer,Kezia Goldmann,Anna Heintz-Buschart,François Buscot,Mika T Tarkka

doi:10.1038/s43705-021-00042-y

Abstract

Plant diversity and plant-related ecosystem functions have been important in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning studies. However, biotic interactions with mycorrhizal fungi have been understudied although they are crucial for plant-resource acquisition. Here, we investigated the effects of tree species richness and tree mycorrhizal type on arbuscular (AMF) and ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) communities. We aimed to understand how dissimilarities in taxa composition and beta-diversity are related to target trees and neighbours of the same or different mycorrhizal type. We sampled a tree diversity experiment with saplings (~7 years old), where tree species richness (monocultures, 2-species, and 4-species mixtures) and mycorrhizal type were manipulated. AMF and EMF richness significantly increased with increasing tree species richness. AMF richness of mixture plots resembled that of the sum of the respective monocultures, whereas EMF richness of mixture plots was lower compared to the sum of the respective monocultures. Specialisation scores revealed significantly more specialised AMF than EMF suggesting that, in contrast to previous studies, AMF were more specialised, whereas EMF were not. We further found that AMF communities were little driven by the surrounding trees, whereas EMF communities were. Our study revealed drivers of mycorrhizal fungal communities and further highlights the distinct strategies of AMF and EMF.

Highlights

Ecological research in the last decades has provided compelling evidence that biodiversity change alters ecosystem functioning [1, 2]
We further studied the effects of tree species 1:1 line than models of two-species mixtures, indicating that the richness, tree mycorrhizal type, neighbourhood, and their inter- observed fungal richness decreased relative to the expected actions on AMF and ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) specialisation, community richness, richness with higher tree species richness
Not all fungal amplicon sequence variants (ASV) were found with this traditional sequencing method, we showed that the high-throughput approach covered the living fungi

Summary

Introduction

Ecological research in the last decades has provided compelling evidence that biodiversity change alters ecosystem functioning [1, 2]. This relationship has been studied extensively in experiments and in natural ecosystems [2, 3]. Plant diversity as well as plant-related ecosystem functions have predominantly been the focus [4, 5]. Biotic interactions with plant symbionts, such as mycorrhizal fungi, remain understudied, they may be directly linked to plant-resource acquisition and, to plant competition and coexistence in plant communities [6–8]. There is still a lack of knowledge of the factors that, besides plant diversity itself, influence plant-symbiont interactions and the impact of different plant symbionts on each other. With the development of molecular tools [10], the detection and quantification of soil-borne organisms has improved

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