Global AM fungi are dominating mycorrhizal communities in a tropical premontane dry forest in Laipuna, South Ecuador

Abstract

Tropical dry forests are an intricate ecosystem with special adaptations to periods of drought. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are essential for plant survival in all terrestrial ecosystems but might be of even greater importance in dry forests as plant growth is limited due to nutrient and water deficiency during the dry season. Tropical dry forests in Ecuador are highly endangered, but studies about AMF communities are scarce. We investigated the AMF community of a premontane semi-deciduous dry forest in South Ecuador during the dry season. We estimated AMF diversity, distribution, and composition of the study site based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and compared the results to those from the tropical montane rainforest and páramo in South Ecuador. OTU delimitation was based on part of the small ribosomal subunit obtained by cloning and Sanger sequencing. Nearly all OTUs were Glomeraceae. The four frequent OTUs were Glomus, and comparison with the MaarjAM database revealed these to be globally distributed with a wide range of ecological adaptations. Several OTUs are shared with virtual taxa from dry forests in Africa. Ordination analysis of AMF communities from the tropical dry and montane rainforests in South Ecuador revealed a unique AMF community in the dry forest with only few overlapping OTUs. Most OTUs that were found in both dry and rainforests and on the two continents were globally distributed Glomus.

Plant hosts may influence arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community composition in mangrove estuaries

“…The majority (76%) of all sequences detected in our study belonged to the family Glomeraceae. The observed dominance of the family Glomeraceae is in accordance with results from previous studies by other researchers from both terrestrial (Hijri et al 2006;Li et al 2010;Soka and Ritchie, 2018;Haug et al 2021) as well as wetland ecosystems (Wirsel SGR, 2004;Wilde et al 2009;Guo and Gong 2014;Tuheteru and Wu, 2017;Yang et al 2018;Zhu et al 2021). Moreover, compared to Gigasporaceae, AMF belonging to Glomeraceae and Acaulosporaceae colonize roots aggressively (Hart and Reader, 2002).…”

Significant changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal community and soil physicochemical properties during the saline-alkali grassland vegetation succession

“…The dominant AM fungal genus in all the three succession stages was Glomus. This was consistent with the previous research and the view that Glomus is a broad-spectrum symbiotic system (Araujo et al, 2021;Haug et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 1994). Furthermore, Paraglomus, Claroideoglomus, Diversispora, Ambispora, and Archaeospora were annotated in this study and accounted for some proportions.…”

Effects of Different Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on Physiology of Viola prionantha under Salt Stress

“…The view that Glomus was a broad-spectrum symbiotic system has been proved in previous research, and Glomus was the dominant AM fungal genera in various environments [23,24]. Many studies also pointed out that the colonization was better than single inoculation when two species were inoculated simultaneously [25,26].…”