Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees

Minxia Liang; David Johnson; David Burslem; Shixiao Yu; Miao Fang; Joe Taylor; Andy F S Taylor; Thorunn Helgason; Xubing Liu

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16507-y

Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees

Minxia Liang, David Johnson, David Burslem, Shixiao Yu, Miao Fang, Joe Taylor, Andy F S Taylor, Thorunn Helgason, Xubing Liu^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

84 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

The mechanisms regulating community composition and local dominance of trees in species-rich forests are poorly resolved, but the importance of interactions with soil microbes is increasingly acknowledged. Here, we show that tree seedlings that interact via root-associated fungal hyphae with soils beneath neighbouring adult trees grow faster and have greater survival than seedlings that are isolated from external fungal mycelia, but these effects are observed for species possessing ectomycorrhizas (ECM) and not arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Moreover, survival of naturally-regenerating AM seedlings over ten years is negatively related to the density of surrounding conspecific plants, while survival of ECM tree seedlings displays positive density dependence over this interval, and AM seedling roots contain greater abundance of pathogenic fungi than roots of ECM seedlings. Our findings show that neighbourhood interactions mediated by beneficial and pathogenic soil fungi regulate plant demography and community structure in hyperdiverse forests.

Original language	English
Article number	2636
Number of pages	7
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	11
Early online date	26 May 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16507-y
Publication status	Published - 26 May 2020

Bibliographical note

We are grateful to Weinan Ye, Dr Yinghua Luo, Dr Zongbo Peng, Jie Li, Dr Meng Xu, Fengmin Huang, Wenbin Li, Yongning Li, and also Dr Buhang Li and his field technician team for help with field data collection. We thank Yanwen Chen, Huidan Teng, and Dr Shan Luo for assistance in the field experiments. We acknowledge Dr. Fang Li for kindly providing the featured images of ECM fungi. This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Project No. 2017YFA0605100) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31770466 to X.L. and 31870403 to M.L.), and partly supported by awards from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC NE/M004848/1 and NE/R004986/1). D.J. is also supported by the N8 AgriFood programme.

Shade-house experimental data are available in the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre at https://doi.org/10.5285/f1d17e61-bb6c-47a9-a648-062c63ea7f16. Sequence data have been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under Project ID PRJNA627300. Field census data are available upon reasonable request from the ForestGEO data portal at http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/.

Keywords

biodiversity
community ecology
forest ecology
MORTALITY
MECHANISMS
MONODOMINANCE
COLONIZATION
COEXISTENCE
FORESTS
MAINTENANCE
DENSITY-DEPENDENCE
DIVERSITY
PATHOGENS

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https://github.com/liuxubing/common-mycorrhizal-networksLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

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title = "Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees",

abstract = "The mechanisms regulating community composition and local dominance of trees in species-rich forests are poorly resolved, but the importance of interactions with soil microbes is increasingly acknowledged. Here, we show that tree seedlings that interact via root-associated fungal hyphae with soils beneath neighbouring adult trees grow faster and have greater survival than seedlings that are isolated from external fungal mycelia, but these effects are observed for species possessing ectomycorrhizas (ECM) and not arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Moreover, survival of naturally-regenerating AM seedlings over ten years is negatively related to the density of surrounding conspecific plants, while survival of ECM tree seedlings displays positive density dependence over this interval, and AM seedling roots contain greater abundance of pathogenic fungi than roots of ECM seedlings. Our findings show that neighbourhood interactions mediated by beneficial and pathogenic soil fungi regulate plant demography and community structure in hyperdiverse forests.",

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author = "Minxia Liang and David Johnson and David Burslem and Shixiao Yu and Miao Fang and Joe Taylor and Taylor, {Andy F S} and Thorunn Helgason and Xubing Liu",

note = "We are grateful to Weinan Ye, Dr Yinghua Luo, Dr Zongbo Peng, Jie Li, Dr Meng Xu, Fengmin Huang, Wenbin Li, Yongning Li, and also Dr Buhang Li and his field technician team for help with field data collection. We thank Yanwen Chen, Huidan Teng, and Dr Shan Luo for assistance in the field experiments. We acknowledge Dr. Fang Li for kindly providing the featured images of ECM fungi. This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Project No. 2017YFA0605100) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31770466 to X.L. and 31870403 to M.L.), and partly supported by awards from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC NE/M004848/1 and NE/R004986/1). D.J. is also supported by the N8 AgriFood programme. Shade-house experimental data are available in the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre at https://doi.org/10.5285/f1d17e61-bb6c-47a9-a648-062c63ea7f16. Sequence data have been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under Project ID PRJNA627300. Field census data are available upon reasonable request from the ForestGEO data portal at http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/. ",

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doi = "10.1038/s41467-020-16507-y",

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journal = "Nature Communications",

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AU - Johnson, David

AU - Burslem, David

AU - Yu, Shixiao

AU - Fang, Miao

AU - Taylor, Joe

AU - Taylor, Andy F S

AU - Helgason, Thorunn

AU - Liu, Xubing

N1 - We are grateful to Weinan Ye, Dr Yinghua Luo, Dr Zongbo Peng, Jie Li, Dr Meng Xu, Fengmin Huang, Wenbin Li, Yongning Li, and also Dr Buhang Li and his field technician team for help with field data collection. We thank Yanwen Chen, Huidan Teng, and Dr Shan Luo for assistance in the field experiments. We acknowledge Dr. Fang Li for kindly providing the featured images of ECM fungi. This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Project No. 2017YFA0605100) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31770466 to X.L. and 31870403 to M.L.), and partly supported by awards from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC NE/M004848/1 and NE/R004986/1). D.J. is also supported by the N8 AgriFood programme. Shade-house experimental data are available in the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre at https://doi.org/10.5285/f1d17e61-bb6c-47a9-a648-062c63ea7f16. Sequence data have been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under Project ID PRJNA627300. Field census data are available upon reasonable request from the ForestGEO data portal at http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/.

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N2 - The mechanisms regulating community composition and local dominance of trees in species-rich forests are poorly resolved, but the importance of interactions with soil microbes is increasingly acknowledged. Here, we show that tree seedlings that interact via root-associated fungal hyphae with soils beneath neighbouring adult trees grow faster and have greater survival than seedlings that are isolated from external fungal mycelia, but these effects are observed for species possessing ectomycorrhizas (ECM) and not arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Moreover, survival of naturally-regenerating AM seedlings over ten years is negatively related to the density of surrounding conspecific plants, while survival of ECM tree seedlings displays positive density dependence over this interval, and AM seedling roots contain greater abundance of pathogenic fungi than roots of ECM seedlings. Our findings show that neighbourhood interactions mediated by beneficial and pathogenic soil fungi regulate plant demography and community structure in hyperdiverse forests.

AB - The mechanisms regulating community composition and local dominance of trees in species-rich forests are poorly resolved, but the importance of interactions with soil microbes is increasingly acknowledged. Here, we show that tree seedlings that interact via root-associated fungal hyphae with soils beneath neighbouring adult trees grow faster and have greater survival than seedlings that are isolated from external fungal mycelia, but these effects are observed for species possessing ectomycorrhizas (ECM) and not arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Moreover, survival of naturally-regenerating AM seedlings over ten years is negatively related to the density of surrounding conspecific plants, while survival of ECM tree seedlings displays positive density dependence over this interval, and AM seedling roots contain greater abundance of pathogenic fungi than roots of ECM seedlings. Our findings show that neighbourhood interactions mediated by beneficial and pathogenic soil fungi regulate plant demography and community structure in hyperdiverse forests.

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KW - community ecology

KW - forest ecology

KW - MORTALITY

KW - MECHANISMS

KW - MONODOMINANCE

KW - COLONIZATION

KW - COEXISTENCE

KW - FORESTS

KW - MAINTENANCE

KW - DENSITY-DEPENDENCE

KW - DIVERSITY

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DO - 10.1038/s41467-020-16507-y

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VL - 11

JO - Nature Communications

JF - Nature Communications

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ER -

Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees

Abstract

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David Burslem

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Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees

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Bibliographical note

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David Burslem

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