Friend or Foe-Light Availability Determines the Relationship between Mycorrhizal Fungi, Rhizobia and Lima Bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.).

ABSTRACT: Plant associations with root microbes represent some of the most important symbioses on earth. While often critically promoting plant fitness, nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) also demand significant carbohydrate allocation in exchange for key nutrients. Though plants may often compensate for carbon loss, constraints may arise under light limitation when plants cannot extensively increase photosynthesis. Under such conditions, costs for maintaining symbioses may outweigh benefits, turning mutualist microbes into parasites, resulting in reduced plant growth and reproduction. In natural systems plants commonly grow with different symbionts simultaneously which again may interact with each other. This might add complexity to the responses of such multipartite re

SUBMITTER: Ballhorn DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4852939 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature