Distribution patterns of arbuscular mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal plant species in Germany

Abstract

We analysed the spatial distribution patterns of plant species’ arbuscular mycorrhizal status across an intermediate geographical scale (i.e. the country of Germany) and related these distributions to environmental drivers. Three levels of arbuscular mycorrhizal status of plant species could be defined: (1) obligate arbuscular mycorrhizal species that are always colonised by mycorrhizal fungi, (2) facultative arbuscular mycorrhizal species that are colonised under some conditions but not colonised under others and (3) non-mycorrhizal species that are never found to be colonised by mycorrhizal fungi. We aimed to investigate whether plant species assemblages at the studied grid cell scale are composed of different proportions of species regarding their arbuscular mycorrhizal status, and whether the variation of these proportions can be linked to the geographical variation of ecological and environmental factors. We fitted a vector generalised additive model (VGAM) for log-ratios of proportions of plant species’ arbuscular mycorrhizal status per grid cell (2859 grid cells, each c. 130km2). The spatially explicit plant arbuscular mycorrhizal status distribution model was based on environmental predictors related to climate, geology and land use. The spatial distribution of plant arbuscular mycorrhizal status can be explained as a function of nine environmental predictors (D2=0.54). Proportion of obligate arbuscular mycorrhizal plant species per grid cell increased with increasing temperature range, mean annual temperature, urban area and area of lime as geological parent material and decreased with increasing area of mixed forest and coniferous forest. Annual temperature range was by far the most important predictor. These results extend the comparative context of former studies that established relationships between mycorrhizal status and other plant characteristics at species level, including those describing species ecological requirements, to a context at the level of assemblages and species distributions. We encourage integrating plant mycorrhizal status as a functional trait in future macroecological analyses.