Arbuscular mycorrhizal interactions of mycoheterotrophic Thismia are more specialized than in autotrophic plants.

ABSTRACT: In general, plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi exchange photosynthetically fixed carbon for soil nutrients, but occasionally nonphotosynthetic plants obtain carbon from AM fungi. The interactions of these mycoheterotrophic plants with AM fungi are suggested to be more specialized than those of green plants, although direct comparisons are lacking. We investigated the mycorrhizal interactions of both green and mycoheterotrophic plants. We used next-generation DNA sequencing to compare the AM communities from roots of five closely related mycoheterotrophic species of Thismia (Thismiaceae), roots of surrounding green plants, and soil, sampled over the entire temperate distribution of Thismia in Australia and New Zealand. We observed that the fungal communities of mycoheterotrophic a

SUBMITTER: Gomes SI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5248637 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature