Trophic interactions as determinants of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community with cascading plant-promoting conse
- PDF / 3,058,990 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 22 Downloads / 171 Views
RESEARCH
Open Access
Trophic interactions as determinants of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community with cascading plant-promoting consequences Yuji Jiang1* , Lu Luan1, Kaijie Hu2, Manqiang Liu3, Ziyun Chen1, Stefan Geisen4*, Xiaoyun Chen3, Huixin Li3, Qinsong Xu2, Michael Bonkowski5 and Bo Sun1*
Abstract Background: The soil mycobiome is composed of a complex and diverse fungal community, which includes functionally diverse species ranging from plant pathogens to mutualists. Among the latter are arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) that provide phosphorous (P) to plants. While plant hosts and abiotic parameters are known to structure AMF communities, it remains largely unknown how higher trophic level organisms, including protists and nematodes, affect AMF abundance and community composition. Results: Here, we explored the connections between AMF, fungivorous protists and nematodes that could partly reflect trophic interactions, and linked those to rhizosphere P dynamics and plant performance in a long-term manure application setting. Our results revealed that manure addition increased AMF biomass and the density of fungivorous nematodes, and tailored the community structures of AMF, fungivorous protists, and nematodes. We detected a higher abundance of AMF digested by the dominant fungivorous nematodes Aphelenchoides and Aphelenchus in high manure treatments compared to no manure and low manure treatments. Structural equation modeling combined with network analysis suggested that predation by fungivorous protists and nematodes stimulated AMF biomass and modified the AMF community composition. The mycorrhizal-fungivore interactions catalyzed AMF colonization and expression levels of the P transporter gene ZMPht1;6 in maize roots, which resulted in enhanced plant productivity. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of predation as a key element in shaping the composition and enhancing the biomass of AMF, leading to increased plant performance. As such, we clarify novel biological mechanism of the complex interactions between AMF, fungivorous protists, and nematodes in driving P absorption and plant performance. Keywords: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, Protists, Nematodes, AMF colonization, Phosphorus transporter genes, Plant productivity
* Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 1 State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China 4 Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University, 6700 ES Wageningen, Netherlands Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other thir
Data Loading...
