Occurrence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on King George Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi make up an important ecological niche in ecosystems, and knowledge of their diversity in extreme environments is still incipient. The objective of this work was to evaluate the density and diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in the soil of King George Island in the South Shetland Islands archipelago, Antarctica. For that, soil and roots of Deschampsia antarctica were collected at the brazilian research station in Antarctica. The spore density, species diversity and mycorrhizal colonization in the roots were evaluated. There was a low density of spores (27.4 ± 17.7) and root mycorrhizal colonization (6 ± 5.1%), which did not present statistical difference. Four species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were identified, distributed in two genera: three species of the genus Glomus (Glomus sp1, Glomus sp2 and Glomus sp3) and one of the genus Acaulospora, which was identified at species level (Acaulospora mellea). Greater soil diversity was verified with pH 5.9 and phosphorus concentration of 111 mg dm -3 , occurring two species of genus Glomus and A. mellea. Based on literature data, this may be the first record of this species of Acaulospora mellea in Antarctic soils, colonizing D. antarctica plants.

Global arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity and abundance decreases with soil available phosphorus

“…In comparison to the others, cold zones had lower AMF diversity. The low number and abundance of AMF host plants and C allocation of host plants to symbiosis in cold zones affect the formation of mycorrhizal symbiosis (Barbosa et al, 2017; Barceló et al, 2019; Bueno et al, 2017; Gardes & Dahlberg, 1996; Olsson et al, 2004; Timling et al, 2012). Veresoglou et al (2019) proposed that irradiance constraints in cold zones contribute to a reduction in mycorrhizal responsiveness, and the reduced mycorrhizal responsiveness further induces a decline in AMF species.…”

First Record of Juncaceicola as Endophytic Fungi Associated with Deschampsia antarctica Desv.

“…Although sequences of nuclear ribosomal spacers are widely used for phylogenetic analysis, we must always be careful to avoid over interpretation, since sequences such as ITs can be misleading when incorporated into phylogenies, since these regions are involved in a lower rate in fungi and can be present in many copies in the plant genome [45]. Taking into account that our sample is an endophyte fungus obtained from leaves of an Antarctic plant, selection pressure is higher in the organism living there [46], and the molecular relationships between endophyte fungi and their hosts have not yet been fully established [47], further analyzes are necessary for the taxonomic determination of our new fungi species.…”

Aspects, problems and utilization of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) application as bio-fertilizer in sustainable agriculture

“…AM show a wide range of tolerance for abiotic factors, hence they are distributed and active worldwide in almost all ecosystems, soil conditions and environment; though the distribution, tolerance and efficacy vary with AM species and strains ( Aguilera et al., 2015 ; Barbosa et al., 2017 ). It was well documented that, mycorrhizal inoculation with different AM species to plants under low or high temperature stress and different nitrogen level ( Liu et al., 2013 ) able to reduce temperature stress and increase P content compared to non-AM plant ( Liu et al., 2016 ; Hu et al., 2015 ; Mathur et al., 2018 ; Zhu et al., 2017 ).…”