Facilitation between woody and herbaceous plants that associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in temperate European forests.

ABSTRACT: In late-successional environments, low in available nutrient such as the forest understory, herbaceous plant individuals depend strongly on their mycorrhizal associates for survival. We tested whether in temperate European forests arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) woody plants might facilitate the establishment of AM herbaceous plants in agreement with the mycorrhizal mediation hypothesis. We used a dataset spanning over 400 vegetation plots in the Weser-Elbe region (northwest Germany). Mycorrhizal status information was obtained from published resources, and Ellenberg indicator values were used to infer environmental data. We carried out tests for both relative richness and relative abundance of herbaceous plants. We found that the subset of herbaceous individuals that associated with AM profit

SUBMITTER: Veresoglou SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5306016 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature