Abstract
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play an essential role in complex ecosystems. However, the species diversity and composition of AMF communities remain unclear in semi-arid mountains. Further, it is not well understood if the characteristics of AMF community assemblies differ for different habitat types, e.g., agricultural arable land, artificial forest land, natural grassland, and bush/wood land. Here, using the high-throughput technology by Illumina sequencing on the MiSeq platform, we explored the species diversity and composition of soil AMF communities among different habitat types in a semi-arid mountain (Taihang Mountain, Mid-western region of China). Then, we analyzed the effect of nutrient composition and soil texture on AMF community assembly. Our results showed that members of the Glomus genera were predominated in all soil types. The distance-based redundancy analysis indicated that the content of water, available phosphorus, and available potassium were the most crucial geochemical factors that significantly affected AMF communities (p < 0.05). The analysis of the soil texture confirmed that AMF diversity was negatively correlated with soil clay content. The comparison of AMF diversity among the various habitat types revealed that the artificial forest land had the lowest AMF diversity in comparison with other land types. Our findings suggest that there were differences in species diversity and composition of soil AMF communities among different habitat types. These findings shed new light on the characteristics of community structure and drivers of community assembly in AMF in semi-arid mountains, and point to the potential importance of different habitat types on AMF communities.
Highlights
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play a high-value role for ecosystem restoration and sustainability (Herder et al, 2010; Sanders, 2010; Verbruggen et al, 2012)
We aimed to identify the relative importance of soil characteristics on AMF diversity and illustrate the differences in AMF communities among the predominant soil types
Through the analysis of Shannon’s index, we discovered that the largest AMF diversity was present in the grassland, followed by the arable land, bush/wood land, and the forest land soils (Table 2)
Summary
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play a high-value role for ecosystem restoration and sustainability (Herder et al, 2010; Sanders, 2010; Verbruggen et al, 2012). Many studies have reported the AMF community composition in different environmental conditions (Öpik et al, 2006; Wubet et al, 2006; Heijden & Scheublin, 2007; Lee, Lee & Young, 2008; Krüger et al, 2009). Scholars have argued that the composition of AMF communities will vary along the gradients of land-use intensity under the same climatic conditions and region of agricultural ecosystems (Dumbrell et al, 2010; Fritz et al, 2010; Lekberg et al, 2011; Mirás-Avalos et al, 2011; Meadow & Zabinski, 2012). Most of the previous research works focused on single ecosystems (Helgason et al, 1998; Lumini et al, 2010; Verbruggen & Toby, 2010), and there are no comparative analyses on the AMF condition among different soil types under the same climate conditions in semi-arid regions
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