Differences of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity and community between a cultivated land, an old field, and a never-cultivated field in a hot and arid ecosystem of southwest China.

We investigated the spore density, species composition, and diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in a cultivated land (CL), an old field (OF), and a never-cultivated field (NCF), which are located adjacently in a slope in the hot and arid ecosystem of southwest China. AMF spores in the rhizosphere soils of representative plants in the three habitats were extracted by wet-sieving and decanting. A total of 47 taxa of AMF including 31 taxa from the genus Glomus, 8 from Acaulospora, 6 from Scutellospora, 1 from Entrophospora, and 1 from Gigaspora were extracted and identified morphologically. The highest spore density occurred in NCF, slightly lower in OF and lowest in CL, and the Shannon-Wiener index of species diversity was reversed. The dominant species of AMF were different in the three habitats. OF resembled NCF more than CL in AMF spore density, species richness, and community composition, which means that AMF community in the OF has been developing from cultivated land to natural habitat. Cluster analysis based on the similarity in AMF community composition indicated that the distribution of AMF was not random over space and that AMF community composition associated with a given plant species was greatly habitat-convergence. Following the cluster analysis, we hypothesized that the effect of habitats on AMF communities were greater than that of the host preference to AMF.