Interactive effects of root endophytes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on an experimental plant community |
| |
Authors: | Matthias C. Rillig Stefanie Wendt Janis Antonovics Stefan Hempel Josef Kohler Jeannine Wehner Tancredi Caruso |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Institut für Biologie, Plant Ecology, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Altensteinstrasse 6, 14195, Berlin, Germany 2. Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), 14195, Berlin, Germany 3. Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA 4. School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, MBC, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast, BT9 7BL, Northern Ireland, UK
|
| |
Abstract: | Plant-soil microbial interactions have moved into focus as an important mechanism for understanding plant coexistence and composition of communities. Both arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) as well as other root endophytic fungi co-occur in plant roots, and therefore have the potential to influence relative abundances of plant species in local assemblages. However, no study has experimentally examined how these key root endosymbiont groups might interact and affect plant community composition. Here, using an assemblage of five plant species in mesocosms in a fully factorial experiment, we added an assemblage of AM fungi and/or a mixture of root endophytic fungal isolates, all obtained from the same grassland field site. The results demonstrate that the AM fungi and root endophytes interact to affect plant community composition by changing relative species abundance, and consequently aboveground productivity. Our study highlights the need to explicitly consider interactions of root-inhabiting fungal groups in studies of plant assemblages. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|