Unraveling fertilization effects on the dynamics of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community in the Qinghai-Tibet Alpine Meadow

Highlights

● Community structure and composition of AMF shifted under different fertilization.

● Soil physicochemical properties played important roles in contributing plant diversity and biomass.

● Fertilization affected plant and AMF communities through changing soil abiotic properties.

● Acaulospora and Diversispora were highly linked with plant communities.

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) represent a crucial component of soil microorganisms, playing pivotal roles in promoting plant growth by enhancing nutrient availability. However, the responses of AMF communities to different fertilization regimes and their correlations with plant communities in the context of anthropogenic disturbances in alpine meadow ecosystems remain largely unexplored. In this study, we investigated the effects of nitrogen, phosphorus, and combined nitrogen-phosphorus fertilization on AMF communities and their interconnections with plant diversity and biomass based on a seven-year long-term experiment conducted on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Our results showed significant shifts in AMF community structure and composition under different fertilization treatments, while the richness of AMF exhibited no remarkable alterations. Notably, soil pH decreased, and electrical conductivity increased with the increasing nitrogen fertilizer application, emerging as pivotal abiotic factors in predicting plant richness and biomass. Fascinatingly, Acaulospora exhibited a positive correlation with plant richness, serving as an important bioindicator of plant richness, while Diversispora emerged as the primary bioindicator of plant biomass. Our findings shed light on potential correlations between AMF community composition and both plant and soil abiotic factors, driven by nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization. We advocate for the critical significance of balanced fertilization in sustaining beneficial plant–soil–AMF interactions in natural ecosystems as well as agricultural soils.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

biodiversity / arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi / nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer / Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

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Data availability statement

The raw sequence reads generated in this study have been deposited in the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of the NCBI under accession numbers PRJNA1019473.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-024-0248-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

Acknowledgements

This project received fundings from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 32101267 and 42107141), the Start-up Funds of Introduced Talent in Lanzhou University (Grant No. 561120205), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Nos. XUEKEN2023039, YDZX2023023, KYQN2022025).

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