Plant‐mycorrhizal interactions mediate plant community coexistence by altering resource demand

Abstract

As the diversity of plants increases in an ecosystem, so does resource competition for soil nutrients, a process that mycorrhizal fungi can mediate. The influence of mycorrhizal fungi on plant biodiversity likely depends on the strength of the symbiosis between the plant and fungi, the differential plant growth responses to mycorrhizal inoculation, and the transfer rate of nutrients from the fungus to plant. However, our current understanding of how nutrient-plant-mycorrhizal interactions influence plant coexistence is conceptual and thus lacks a unified quantitative framework. To quantify the conditions of plant coexistence mediated by mycorrhizal fungi, we developed a mechanistic resource competition model that explicitly included plant-mycorrhizal symbioses. We found that plant-mycorrhizal interactions shape plant coexistence patterns by creating a tradeoff in resource competition. Especially, a tradeoff in resource competition was caused by differential payback in the carbon resources that plants invested in the fungal symbiosis and/or by the stoichiometric constraints on plants that required additional, less-beneficial, resources to sustain growth. Our results suggested that resource availability and the variation in plant-mycorrhizal interactions act in concert to drive plant coexistence patterns. Applying our framework, future empirical studies should investigate plant-mycorrhizal interactions under multiple levels of resource availability.

Soil microbes promote complementarity effects among co‐existing trees through soil nitrogen partitioning

“…If and where the microbe‐mediated soil nutrient partitioning does occur in forest, it may not only increase resource extraction by mixed‐species plant communities but also facilitate plant species coexistence in complex resource environments. Although plant–mycorrhiza interactions have been repeatedly shown to affect the coexistence of different plant species and biodiversity‐productivity relationships (Bennett et al., ; Jiang, Moore, Priyadarshi, & Classen, ; Klironomos, McCune, Hart, & Neville, ; Luo, De Deyn, Jiang, & Yu, ; Maherali & Klironomos, ; Teste et al., ; van der Heijden, Bardgett, & van Straalen, ; van der Heijden et al., ; Wagg et al., ), our case study reveals the role of soil microbes in plant N partitioning. Our species pool contained only three tree species, and therefore, we cannot extrapolate the results to a broader set of mature canopy trees in natural forest.…”

Changes in soil nitrogen stocks following vegetation restoration in a typical karst catchment

“…By definition, shallow soils have a low soil volume, and soil depth tend to be limited by the shallow bedrock in karst regions. This shallow bedrock may enhance horizontal but not vertical root growth (Estrada‐Medina, Graham, Allen, Jiménez‐Osornio, & Robles‐Casolco, ; Nie, Chen, Wang, & Ding, ), and may thereby promote the accumulation of soil organic matter, as well as soil C and N, by bringing together rainwater, nutrients, and root exudates in horizontally distributed spots (Göransson, Edwards, Perreijn, Smittenberg, & Venterink, ; Jiang, Moore, Priyadarshi, & Classen, ; Zhang et al, ). Hu et al () also found that soil depth and bulk density were important factors affecting the accumulation of SOC after natural restoration in our study area.…”

Soils beneath different arctic shrubs have contrasting responses to a natural gradient in temperature

“…, Jiang et al. ). As shrubs expand in the arctic due to climatic warming, they will expand their influence on the soils they grow in and lead to feedbacks that will shape how these ecosystems respond to and develop under a warmer and more variable world (e.g., Buckeridge et al.…”