Nestedness in Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Communities along Soil pH Gradients in Early Primary Succession: Acid-Tolerant Fungi Are pH Generalists.

ABSTRACT: Soil acidity is a major constraint on plant productivity. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi support plant colonization in acidic soil, but soil acidity also constrains fungal growth and diversity. Fungi in extreme environments generally evolve towards specialists, suggesting that AM fungi in acidic soil are acidic-soil specialists. In our previous surveys, however, some AM fungi detected in strongly acidic soils could also be detected in a soil with moderate pH, which raised a hypothesis that the fungi in acidic soils are pH generalists. To test the hypothesis, we conducted a pH-manipulation experiment and also analyzed AM fungal distribution along a pH gradient in the field using a synthesized dataset of the previous and recent surveys. Rhizosphere soils of the generalist plant Miscanthus

SUBMITTER: Kawahara A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5068792 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature