Abstract
Plants are known to modulate their own rhizosphere mycobiome. However, field studies that use resident plants to relate the microbiome assemblage to environmental factors such as land-use suffer from the problem that confounding factors such as plant age and performance may override the targeted effects. In contrast, the use of even-aged phytometer plants pre-cultivated under uniform conditions helps to reduce such random variation. We investigated the rhizosphere mycobiomes of phytometer and resident plants of two common grassland species, Dactylis glomerata L. s. str. and Plantago lanceolata L. along a land-use intensity gradient using ITS rRNA Illumina amplicon sequencing. Remarkably, we did not detect effects of the plant types (resident vs. phytometer plant, even though some fungal taxa exhibited plant species specificity), indicating that phytometer plants hosted a comparable rhizosphere mycobiome as resident plants. Our data indicate that the plant species harbor distinct fungal communities, with fungal richness in the rhizosphere of P. lanceolata being substantially higher than that of D. glomerata. Land-use intensity had a clear impact on the mycobiome of both plant species, with specific fungal genera showing differential tolerance to high intensities. Overall, the phytometer approach has a high potential to reveal environmental impacts on rhizosphere communities.
Highlights
Plants are known to modulate their own rhizosphere mycobiome
Our results demonstrate a different rhizosphere fungal OTU richness between the two plant species
Apart from differences in the OTU richness, we found that the two plant species selected distinct fungal communities in their rhizospheres which provides strong support for our first hypothesis
Summary
Plants are known to modulate their own rhizosphere mycobiome. field studies that use resident plants to relate the microbiome assemblage to environmental factors such as land-use suffer from the problem that confounding factors such as plant age and performance may override the targeted effects. Land-use intensity had a clear impact on the mycobiome of both plant species, with specific fungal genera showing differential tolerance to high intensities. It is possible that the fungal communities in the rhizosphere of phytometer plants could be distinct from those of the resident plants and display lower variation, e.g. because of difference in establishment time. By defining a ‘land-use niche′ and a corresponding ‘niche breadth′ for fungal genera, we can distinguish between losers and winners of intensive land-use as well as determine specialists adapted to intermediate land-use[19] It is of interest, whether fungal genera react differently to land-use intensity depending on residence time, i.e. comparing resident vs phytometer plants. We further predicted that (ii) plant type influences the fungal community as the resident plants have more time to establish connections to the surrounding bulk soil which lead to an enriched community compared to phytometers or to a reduced diversity by selecting only specific fungi. (iii) we expected for both, resident and phytometer plants, a higher number of dominant fungal genera to be negatively influenced by land-use intensification (high land-use intensity)
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