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Genetic and ontogenetic variation in an endangered tree structures dependent arthropod and fungal communities.

ABSTRACT: Plant genetic and ontogenetic variation can significantly impact dependent fungal and arthropod communities. However, little is known of the relative importance of these extended genetic and ontogenetic effects within a species. Using a common garden trial, we compared the dependent arthropod and fungal community on 222 progeny from two highly differentiated populations of the endangered heteroblastic tree species, Eucalyptus morrisbyi. We assessed arthropod and fungal communities on both juvenile and adult foliage. The community variation was related to previous levels of marsupial browsing, as well as the variation in the physicochemical properties of leaves using near-infrared spectroscopy. We found highly significant differences in community composition, abundance and diversity parameters between eucalypt source populations in the common garden, and these were comparable to differences between the distinctive juvenile and adult foliage. The physicochemical properties assessed accounted for a significant percentage of the community variation but did not explain fully the community differences between populations and foliage types. Similarly, while differences in population susceptibility to a major marsupial herbivore may result in diffuse genetic effects on the dependent community, this still did not account for the large genetic-based differences in dependent communities between populations. Our results emphasize the importance of maintaining the populations of this rare species as separate management units, as not only are the populations highly genetically structured, this variation may alter the trajectory of biotic colonization of conservation plantings.

SUBMITTER: Gosney BJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4254790 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Genetic and ontogenetic variation in an endangered tree structures dependent arthropod and fungal communities.

Gosney Benjamin J BJ O Reilly-Wapstra Julianne M JM Forster Lynne G LG Barbour Robert C RC Iason Glenn R GR Potts Brad M BM

PloS one 20141203 12

Plant genetic and ontogenetic variation can significantly impact dependent fungal and arthropod communities. However, little is known of the relative importance of these extended genetic and ontogenetic effects within a species. Using a common garden trial, we compared the dependent arthropod and fungal community on 222 progeny from two highly differentiated populations of the endangered heteroblastic tree species, Eucalyptus morrisbyi. We assessed arthropod and fungal communities on both juveni ...[more]

PMID: 25469641

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Project description:Trees associating with different mycorrhizas often differ in their effects on litter decomposition, nutrient cycling, soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics, and plant-soil interactions. For example, due to differences between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (ECM) tree leaf and root traits, ECM-associated soil has lower rates of C and N cycling and lower N availability than AM-associated soil. These observations suggest that many groups of nonmycorrhizal fungi should be affected by the mycorrhizal associations of dominant trees through controls on nutrient availability. To test this overarching hypothesis, we explored the influence of predominant forest mycorrhizal type and mineral N availability on soil fungal communities using next-generation amplicon sequencing. Soils from four temperate hardwood forests in southern Indiana, United States, were studied; three forests formed a natural gradient of mycorrhizal dominance (100% AM tree basal area to 100% ECM basal area), while the fourth forest contained a factorial experiment testing long-term N addition in both dominant mycorrhizal types. We found that overall fungal diversity, as well as the diversity and relative abundance of plant pathogenic and saprotrophic fungi, increased with greater AM tree dominance. Additionally, tree community mycorrhizal associations explained more variation in fungal community composition than abiotic variables, including soil depth, SOM content, nitrification rate, and mineral N availability. Our findings suggest that tree mycorrhizal associations may be good predictors of the diversity, composition, and functional potential of soil fungal communities in temperate hardwood forests. These observations help explain differing biogeochemistry and community dynamics found in forest stands dominated by differing mycorrhizal types. IMPORTANCE Our work explores how differing mycorrhizal associations of temperate hardwood trees (i.e., arbuscular [AM] versus ectomycorrhizal [ECM] associations) affect soil fungal communities by altering the diversity and relative abundance of saprotrophic and plant-pathogenic fungi along natural gradients of mycorrhizal dominance. Because temperate hardwood forests are predicted to become more AM dominant with climate change, studies examining soil communities along mycorrhizal gradients are necessary to understand how these global changes may alter future soil fungal communities and their functional potential. Ours, along with other recent studies, identify possible global trends in the frequency of specific fungal functional groups responsible for nutrient cycling and plant-soil interactions as they relate to mycorrhizal associations.

Project description:Increasing biodiversity loss profoundly affects community structure and ecosystem functioning. However, the differences in community assembly and potential drivers of the co-occurrence network structure of soil fungi and bacteria in association with tree species richness gradients are poorly documented. Here, we examined soil fungal and bacterial communities in a Chinese subtropical tree species richness experiment (from 1 to 16 species) using amplicon sequencing targeting the internal transcribed spacer 2 and V4 hypervariable region of the rRNA genes, respectively. Tree species richness had no significant effect on the diversity of either fungi or bacteria. In addition to soil and spatial distance, tree species richness and composition had a significant effect on fungal community composition but not on bacterial community composition. In fungal rather than bacterial co-occurrence networks, the average degree, degree centralization, and clustering coefficient significantly decreased, but the modularity significantly increased with increasing tree species richness. Fungal co-occurrence network structure was influenced by tree species richness and community composition as well as the soil carbon: nitrogen ratio, but the bacterial co-occurrence network structure was affected by soil pH and spatial distance. This study demonstrates that the community assembly and potential drivers of the co-occurrence network structure of soil fungi and bacteria differ in the subtropical forest. IMPORTANCE Increasing biodiversity loss profoundly affects community structure and ecosystem functioning. Therefore, revealing the mechanisms associated with community assembly and co-occurrence network structure of microbes along plant species diversity gradients is very important for understanding biodiversity maintenance and community stability in response to plant diversity loss. Here, we compared the differences in community assembly and potential drivers of the co-occurrence network structure of soil fungi and bacteria in a subtropical tree diversity experiment. In addition to soil and spatial distance, plants are more strongly predictive of the community and co-occurrence network structure of fungi than those of bacteria. The study highlighted that plants play more important roles in shaping community assembly and interactions of fungi than of bacteria in the subtropical tree diversity experiment.

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Genetic and ontogenetic variation in an endangered tree structures dependent arthropod and fungal communities.

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Genetic and ontogenetic variation in an endangered tree structures dependent arthropod and fungal communities.

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