{"id":4403,"date":"2023-07-06T08:09:29","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T08:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/?p=4403"},"modified":"2023-07-06T08:22:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T08:22:35","slug":"new-publication-from-albracht-et-al-in-frontiers-in-soil-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/2023\/07\/06\/new-publication-from-albracht-et-al-in-frontiers-in-soil-science\/","title":{"rendered":"New publication from Albracht et al. in Frontiers in Soil Science: Effects of recurrent summer droughts on arbuscular mycorrhizal and total fungal communities in experimental grasslands differing in plant diversity and community composition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction:<\/strong> Biodiversity loss and climate change have been \ndetermined as major global drivers affecting ecosystems and their \nfunctioning. In this context, drought was shown to have negative effects\n on ecosystems by disrupting ecological processes, which could be \nbuffered in more biodiverse systems. Many studies, however, focus on \neffects on aboveground communities of single drought events, while \ndynamics of soil-borne communities are still widely unclear, despite \ntheir important roles in ecosystem functioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methods:<\/strong> To\n elucidate the effect of recurrent summer drought periods on fungal \ncommunities in a long-term grassland biodiversity experiment, roof \nshelters were installed on grassland plots ranging in plant species \nrichness from 1 to 16 species and plant functional group richness (1-4 \ngroups) and composition. After 9 years of summer droughts, bulk soil was\n sampled and used for Illumina sequencing of the ITS2 and SSU genes to \ncharacterize the total fungal and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) \ncommunities, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results:<\/strong> We found shifts of AMF \nand total fungi community structures caused by recurrent drought and \nplant species richness, but no buffering of drought effects by plant \ndiversity. Alpha-diversity (VT or ASV richness) of both AMF and total \nfungi increased with plant species richness but was not significantly \naffected by drought. Even though drought overall had minimal \nlong-lasting effects, we found Diversispora<\/em> and Paraglomus<\/em> among the AMF and Penicillium<\/em>\n among total fungal communities to be more abundant after the drought \ntreatment. AMF communities were affected by the presence of individual \nplant functional groups, reacting stronger to presence of legumes under \ndrought, while total fungal interaction with plant communities were \nsimilar under drought as control. AMF \u03b1-diversity differed between plant\n functional groups in control conditions but was independent of plant \ncommunity composition under drought. In contrast, total fungi \n\u03b1-diversity was increased by presence of herbs and legumes only under \ndrought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discussion:<\/strong> From our results, we conclude that recurring moderate summer droughts do not strongly affect soil fungal communities. All shifts can be explained by indirect effects through the plant community and its top-down effect on soils altered by drought. Further, AMF are not less affected than total fungal communities, but rather respond differently by interacting more strongly with legumes in response to drought. Consequently, not plant species richness, but plant functional composition, dominates in shaping fungal communities under recurrent droughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Genus level composition and changes of AMF and total fungal communities. Relative abundances of (A) VT of AMF and (B) ASV of total fungal communities > 5%, subdivided by the plant species richness levels (1 to 16) in drought (D) vs control (C) plots. Changes in significantly differential abundant taxa (C \u2013 AMF, D \u2013 total fungi), presented as log fold change of abundance after drought compared to control plots with standard deviations bar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reference: <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Albracht, C., N. Eisenhauer, A. Vogel, C. Wagg, F. Buscot, et al. 2023. Effects of recurrent summer droughts on arbuscular mycorrhizal and total fungal communities in experimental grasslands differing in plant diversity and community composition. Frontiers in Soil Science 3 :1129845. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/fsoil.2023.1129845<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction: Biodiversity loss and climate change have been determined as major global drivers affecting ecosystems and their functioning. In this context, drought was shown to have negative effects on ecosystems…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4403"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4403"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4403\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}