López-García Álvaro, Azcón-Aguilar Concepción, Barea José M
Soil Microbiology and Symbiotic Systems Department, CSIC-Estación Experimental del Zaidín, C/Profesor Albareda 1, 18008, Granada, Spain,
Oecologia. 2014 Dec;176(4):1075-86. doi: 10.1007/s00442-014-3091-7. Epub 2014 Sep 26.
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi have traditionally been considered generalist symbionts. However, an increasing number of studies are pointing out the selectivity potential of plant hosts. Plant life form, determined by plant life history traits, seems to drive the AM fungal community composition. The AM fungi also exhibit a wide diversity of functional traits known to be responsible for their distribution in natural ecosystems. However, little is known about the role of plant and fungal traits driving the resultant symbiotic assemblages. With the aim of testing the feedback relationship between plant and fungal traits on the resulting AM fungal community, we inoculated three different plant life forms, i.e. annual herbs, perennial herbs and perennial semi-woody plants, with AM fungal communities sampled in different seasons. We hypothesized that the annual climate variation will induce changes in the mean traits of the AM fungal communities present in the soil throughout the year. Furthermore, the association of plants with different life forms with AM fungi with contrasting life history traits will show certain preferences according to reciprocal traits of the plants and fungi. We found changes in the AM fungal community throughout the year, which were differentially disrupted by disturbance and altered by plant growth form and plant biomass. Both plant and fungal traits clearly contributed to the resultant AM fungal communities. The revealed process can have implications for the functioning of ecosystems since changes in dominant plant life forms or climatic variables could influence the traits of AM fungal communities in soil and hence ecosystem processes.
丛枝菌根（AM）真菌传统上被认为是泛化共生体。然而，越来越多的研究指出植物宿主具有选择性潜力。由植物生活史特征决定的植物生活型似乎驱动着AM真菌群落组成。AM真菌还表现出多种多样的功能特征，这些特征已知决定了它们在自然生态系统中的分布。然而，对于驱动最终共生组合的植物和真菌特征的作用，人们了解甚少。为了测试植物和真菌特征对最终AM真菌群落的反馈关系，我们用在不同季节采集的AM真菌群落接种了三种不同的植物生活型，即一年生草本植物、多年生草本植物和多年生半木本植物。我们假设，全年的气候变化会导致土壤中AM真菌群落平均特征的变化。此外，具有不同生活型的植物与具有不同生活史特征的AM真菌的关联，将根据植物和真菌的相互特征表现出一定的偏好。我们发现全年AM真菌群落都有变化，这些变化受到干扰的不同程度破坏，并因植物生长型和植物生物量而改变。植物和真菌特征都对最终的AM真菌群落有明显贡献。所揭示的这一过程可能会对生态系统功能产生影响，因为优势植物生活型或气候变量的变化可能会影响土壤中AM真菌群落的特征，进而影响生态系统过程。
