Mycorrhizal fungi form associations with most land plants and benefit plants in nutrient acquisition. These mycorrhizal nutritional benefits may depend largely on the fungal identities and their community structures and thus can vary among host plants. However, to what extent host species identity determines mycorrhizal fungal community is still largely unknown. Local environmental conditions may also select for certain groups of mycorrhizal fungi. This study collected root samples from arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) trees (e.g. maple, tulip poplar) and ectomycorrhizal (EM) trees (e.g. oak, pine) growing together at two nearby sites of different soil properties in central Pennsylvania, U.S.A. One site was derived from limestone and the other derived from shale. Mycorrhizal fungal DNA was extracted from roots and Next-Gen sequencing techniques (Illumina Miseq) were applied to identify the mycorrhizal fungal species and their community composition of each plant host from the two sites.
Results/Conclusions
Mycorrhizal fungal composition differed among host plants, but the difference between sites was even stronger, for both AM and EM fungi. Many of the same fungal operational taxonomic unites (OTUs) were shared among different host species from the same site. In contrast, the overlap of fungal OTUs was small for the same host species from different sites. These results indicated that host specificity was relatively low for mycorrhizal fungi associated with the co-occurring temperate trees. Local fungal species pool that was filtered by habitat conditions may be a key driver shaping the mycorrhizal fungal community composition for both AM and EM trees.