Host filtering, not competitive exclusion, may be the main driver of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community assembly under high phosphorus
Frew, A., Heuck, M. K., & Aguilar‐Trigueros, C. A. (2023). Host filtering, not competitive exclusion, may be the main driver of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community assembly under high phosphorus. Functional Ecology, 37(7), 1856-1869. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.14349
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Functional EcologyDate
2023Copyright
© 2023 The Authors. Functional Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society
A major goal in ecology is understanding the factors which determine the diversity and distribution of organisms. The outcome of the symbiotic relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is strongly influenced by soil phosphorus (P) availability. Despite this knowledge, there is still much to uncover about how soil P status can shape the taxonomic and phylogenetic assembly of root-colonising AM fungi. Additionally, there is a paucity of understanding about the implications of these changes for the outcome of the AM symbiosis in terms of plant growth, nutrient status and defence traits.
We conducted a factorial pot experiment where sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) was grown under three different P treatments (low, medium and high), in the presence or absence of a natural AM fungal community. By analysing the diversity and community structure of the fungal community colonising roots, we aimed to determine if and how soil P influences the relatedness of these communities and whether competitive exclusion or environmental filtering play a more significant role in their assembly. Additionally, we evaluated the concomitant outcomes for plant growth, nutrient acquisition and defensive chemistry (phenolics).
Increasing P availability reduced AM fungal richness and increased community evenness. Root-colonising AM fungal communities under the high P treatment had significantly reduced phylogenetic diversity and comparatively lower mean pairwise distances among all treatments. This indicated that AM fungal communities became more closely related (phylogenetically clustered) with increasing soil P. The mycorrhizal growth and mycorrhizal P responses of plants were positive under low and medium P, but this was lost under high P, however, plant phenolics were increased.
Our results suggest that under high P conditions, environmental filtering plays an important role in AM fungal community assembly as host plants alter their selectivity of fungal functional groups prioritising those associated with enhancing plant stress resistance and defences, rather than nutrient acquisition. Here we demonstrated how soil P status can shape taxonomic and phylogenetic assembly of AM fungi and the associated functional outcomes for the host.
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A.F. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE220100479), M.K.H. was supported by a higher degree by research scholarship provided by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. C.A.A.-T. was supported by a Feodor-Lynen Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation). The authors thank the technical teams at the University of Southern Queensland and the Western Sydney University Next Generation Sequencing Facility for their support. Open access publishing facilitated by Western Sydney University, as part of the Wiley - Western Sydney University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. ...License
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