Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Enhance Plant Diversity, Density and Productivity of Spring Ephemeral Community in Desert Ecosystem

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form intimate associations with the roots of about 85% of all terrestrial plants, and can greatly increase a plant's uptake of soil nutrients and have been shown to influence plant diversity in several ecosystems. A lot of studies have reported the effect of arbuscular mycorrhizas on plant density, species diversity, richness and productivity in desert herbland in Gurbantonggut desert, China. Here, we conduct a mycorrhizal functional study by suppressing AM fungi by applying the fungicide benomyl as a soil drench in soil cores and field in-situ experiment. The mycorrhiza-responsiveness of the dominant species Erodium oxyrrhynchum is assessed in intact soil cores containing the indigenous AM fungi. The soil-cores experiment displayed E. oxyrrhynchum to have a significant positive shoot and root growth response, and this is in response to the abundance of the indigenous AM fungal colonisation. The field experiment indicates the total aboveground dry biomass is negatively influenced by the suppression of AM fungi, though, no significant effect produced in the dominant and common plant species. The fungal suppression also affected density, species diversity and richness. The density of non-mycorrhizal plant Alyssum linifolium increases significantly in the treatment of suppressed AM fungi. The spore density decreases significantly in benomyl-treated plots. Our results showed that AM fungi were very important in desert ecosystem for the maintaining of plant biodiversity, richness and productivity.

Host-Specific Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on Two Caragana Species in Desert Grassland

“…Our first hypothesis was that native AMF inoculation would enhance plant performance. In this study, C. korshinskii plants showed increased shoot biomass when inoculated with native AM fungal communities, which was in line with previous report [50]. However, the effect of AMF inoculation also depended heavily on the host plant identity as has been reported [51].…”

iTRAQ Proteomic Analysis of Continuously Cropped Soybean Root Inoculated With Funneliformis mosseae

“…Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form specific arbuscular structures and vesicles by infecting the roots of terrestrial vascular plants, thereby enhancing the absorption and transport of carbon, nitrogen, mineral elements and water in plant roots, which promotes plant growth and development, nutritional metabolism, and photosynthesis. AMF are therefore known as biofertilizers (Alva et al, 2017; Luginbuehl et al, 2017), and they have also been associated with resistance to stresses such as salinity and alkalinity, heavy metals, and drought (Tao et al, 2016; Alojz et al, 2017; Shi et al, 2017; Xu et al, 2017), and resistance to diseases including root rot, verticillium wilt and other wilt diseases (Qian et al, 2015; Fauziyah et al, 2017; Sharma and Sharma, 2017; Tripathi et al, 2017). The effects of inoculation with AMF have been widely studied, and the symbiotic relationships between AMF and plants have been analyzed using proteomics.…”