Observations on the Mycorrhizal Status of Some Alpine Plant Communities

Abstract

SUMMARY In some Austrian alpine plant communities, levels of vesicular‐arbuscular mycorrhizal infection are highest in closed herb‐rich communities of intermediate altitudes (1900 to 2500 m). In fertilized hay meadows of lower altitudes (1600 m) and in the nival zone above 3000 m, endogonaceous infection is light. In the latter, it is mainly by the fine endophyte, Glomus tenuis. Many plants throughout the altitudinal range of the survey are infected with dark septate hyphae and, in the Cyperaceae, this is the dominant infection. Ectomycorrhizas occur on some herbaceous species as well as on Salix up to 2500 m. The possible significance of the infection patterns is discussed.

Host Identity Impacts Rhizosphere Fungal Communities Associated with Three Alpine Plant Species

“…Mycorrhizal fungal diversity is predicted to be lower in arctic and alpine regions due to environmental constraints, dispersal barriers, and an increased number of facultative or nonmycorrhizal host species [22,23]. Support for this hypothesis based on studies conducted across latitudinal and elevational gradients is mixed [15,20,24,25]. Thus, additional surveys spanning a greater number of sites and host species is needed to fully address the question of fungal diversity in arctic and alpine ecosystems.…”

“…Based on the importance of species-specific feedbacks involving mycorrhizal and nonmycorrhizal fungi in other study systems [26,27] we hypothesized that rhizosphere fungal communities vary among T. ceratophorum, T. officinale, and P. viscosum. Given the patchy distribution of fungi in alpine ecosystems [24,28,29] we also hypothesized that unique fungal communities persist in open meadow and willow understory habitats. We evaluated these hypotheses for both AMF and non-AMF to determine if the mutualistic AMF community and functionally diverse non-AMF community respond similarly to host and habitat characteristics.…”

Dark septate endophytes: a review of facultative biotrophic root‐colonizing fungi

“…Most authors (see http :\\www.cup.cam.ac.uk\ SPECIESITABLE.html) observed root endophytes with darkly pigmented, septate hyphae that, in most cases, formed intracellular structures similar to those termed microsclerotia by Read & Haselwandter (1981). The sterile dark mycelium seems ubiquitous in soil and root systems ; it dominated in studies of fungi from washed soil or root samples from the Wang & Wildox (1985) subantarctic (Heal, Bailey & Latter, 1967), boreal coniferous forests in Canada (Summerbell, 1988(Summerbell, , 1989, temperate and boreal forests in Northern and Central Europe (Holdenrieder & Sieber, 1992 ;Ahlich & Sieber, 1996) and exotic pine plantations in New Zealand (Chu-Chou, 1979 ;Chu-Chou & Grace, 1982).…”

“…Morphological structures of DSE-colonized roots do not fall clearly into any previously described category of mycorrhizal, parasitic or pathogenic associations. The terms consequently introduced to describe the patterns of this root-fungus association were : ' dark septate ' (Read & Haselwandter, 1981) or ' septate ' endophytes (O'Dell et al, 1993).…”

Belowground solutions to global challenges: special issue from the 9th symposium of the International Society of Root Research

“…Fine root endophyte has recently been aligned with subphylum Mucoromycotina, rather than the phylum Glomeromycota which contains the AM fungi (Orchard et al 2017). Storage of samples for greater than two days may have contributed to under-reporting of what could be a second ubiquitous group (Abbott and Robson 1982;Orchard et al 2016b;Read and Haselwandter 1981;Ormsby et al 2007) of arbuscule-producing root-colonising fungi.…”