Authors: Ben Bubner Matthias Fladung Peter Lentzsch Babette Münzenberger Reinhard F Hüttl
Publish Date: 2013/04/21
Volume: 27, Issue: 5, Pages: 1327-1338
Abstract
Niche differentiation is a common explanation for high ectomycorrhizal diversity In monocultures and on small spatial scales the number of variable factors that may provide niches decreases Still even in the restricted volume of a soil core typically more than one ectomycorrhizal species is found We tested the hypothesis that roots of different individual beech genotypes provide niches on a small spatial scale in a pure beech Fagus sylvatica L stand in the Northeastern Lowlands of Germany Fourteen ectomycorrhizal species as determined by ITS sequencing and phylograms were patchily distributed along an 81 m long transect with ten transect points All root segments in the three species richest soil cores and the surrounding beeches were genotyped by microsatellite PCR In each of the three soil cores roots of two host genotypes were present that corresponded to the two closest mature trees We found that the different root genotypes did not carry different sets of ectomycorrhizal species even at the high species resolution provided through our study Therefore the hypothesis of tree genotypes contributing to ectomycorrhizal biodiversity at the analyzed beech stand has to be rejected Exploration types and stochastic processes are discussed as alternative explanations for the species richness and distributions in the analyzed soil cores To the best of our knowledge this is the first report that links ectomycorrhizal biodiversity in a soil core to the individual genotype of an angiosperm hostWe thank Katrin Groppe Ilona Bartelt and Monika Roth for excellent technical assistance We are grateful to Ingrid Kottke whose comments helped to improve an earlier version of the manuscript Gabriele Franke and her team performed measurements of soil parameters We are especially grateful to an anonymous reviewer who pointed to the concept of exploration types as alternative explanation for high species diversity in a restricted soil volume We thank M T LavinZimmer for assisting with the English language
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