Nitrogen addition and fungal symbiosis alter early dune plant succession.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) enrichment can have complex effects on plant communities. In low-nutrient, primary successional systems such as sand dunes, N enrichment may alter the trajectory of plant community assembly or the dominance of foundational, ecosystem-engineering plants. Predicting the consequences of N enrichment may be complicated by plant interactions with microbial symbionts because increases in a limiting resource, such as N, could alter the costs and benefits of symbiosis. To evaluate the direct and interactive effects of microbial symbiosis and N addition on plant succession, we established a long-term field experiment in Michigan, USA, manipulating the presence of the symbiotic fungal endophyte Epichloë amarillans in Ammophila breviligulata, a dominant ecosystem-engineerin

SUBMITTER: Garces KR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10027266 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature