Plant community and soil properties drive arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity: A case study in tropical forests

Abstract

The mutual interdependence of plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is important in carbon and mineral nutrient exchange. However, an understanding of how AMF community assemblies vary in different forests and the underlying factors regulating AMF diversity in native tropical forests is largely unknown. We explored the AMF community assembly and the underlying factors regulating AMF diversity in a young (YF) and an old-growth forest (OF) in a tropical area. The results showed that a total of 53 AMF phylogroups (virtual taxa, VTs) were detected, 38±1 in the OF and 34±1 in the YF through high-throughput sequencing of 18S rDNA, and AMF community composition was significantly different between the two forests. A structural equation model showed that the forest traits indirectly influenced AMF diversity via the plant community, soil properties and microbes, which explained 44.2% of the total observed variation in AMF diversity. Plant diversity and biomass were the strongest predictors of AMF diversity, indicating that AMF diversity was dominantly regulated by biotic factors at our study sites. Our study indicated that forest community traits have a predictable effect on the AMF community; plant community traits and soil properties are particularly important for determining AMF diversity in tropical forests.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi / High-throughput sequencing / Microbes / Plant community traits / Soil properties / Tropical forests

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31770491, 31270499 and 41430529), Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (GML2019ZD0408), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (2019A1515011486). The authors thank Prof. Hakan Wallander (Lund University, Sweden) for writing advice. Mr. Mingzhi Li (Genepioneer Biotechnologies, Nanjing 210014, China) and Dr. Mingsen Qin (Lanzhou University, China) are thanked for providing bioinformatics analysis.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author contributions

J.Z. and X.T. designed the research, J.Z., C.Q and. G.C. collected the samples, J.Z. and Z.L. performed the experiments and analyzed the data and J.Z., C.Q., L.M. and X.T. wrote the manuscript.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-020-0049-z and is accessible for authorized users.

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