Abstract
Despite the crucial importance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) for numerous processes within terrestrial ecosystems, knowledge of the determinants of AMF community structure still is limited, mainly because of the limited scope of the available individual case studies which often only include a few environmental variables. Here, we describe the AMF diversity of mid-European meadows (mown or regularly cut grasslands, or recently abandoned lands where grasslands established spontaneously) within a considerably heterogeneous landscape over a scale of several hundred kilometers with regard to macroclimatic, microclimatic, and soil parameters. We include data describing the habitat (including vegetation type), geography, and climate, and test their contribution to the structure of the AMF communities at a regional scale. We amplified and sequenced the ITS 2 region of the ribosomal DNA operon of the AMF from soil samples using nested PCR and Illumina pair-end amplicon sequencing. Habitat (especially soil pH) and geographical parameters (spatial distance, altitude, and longitude) were the main determinants of the structure of the AMF communities in the meadows at a regional scale, with the abundance of genera Septoglomus, Paraglomus, Archaeospora, Funneliformis, and Dominikia driving the main response. The effects of climate and vegetation type were not significant and were mainly encompassed within the geography and/or soil pH effects. This study illustrates how important it is to have a large set of environmental metadata to compare the importance of different factors influencing the AMF community structure at large spatial scales.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (Project 18-01486S), the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (Project LK11224), and the Long-term Development Program RVO 61388971.
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Explanatory variable data are available as a supplement to this article (Online Resource 2). Sequences have been deposited in the Sequence Read Archive (NCBI) under PRJNA 414957/SRP 120469, temporary submission ID: SUB 3139645.
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JJ, TK, MG, and LZ planned the field sample collection strategy. TK and LZ collected the field samples and recorded the details of the vegetation cover at the sampling sites. TK, LZ, VŘ, RS, HH, MŘ, HG, MG, and PB processed the field samples, carried out the analyses, and/or processed the metadata. VŘ and PŠ analyzed the data, and VŘ and JJ wrote the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Řezáčová, V., Slavíková, R., Konvalinková, T. et al. Geography and habitat predominate over climate influences on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities of mid-European meadows. Mycorrhiza 29, 567–579 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-019-00921-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-019-00921-2