Effect of land-use change over arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi diversity in an Argentinian endemic native forest

ONTIVERO, R. E.; RISIO ALLIONE, L. V.; IRIARTE, H.; LUGO, M. A.

Conferencia; The 2nd International Electronic Conference on Diversity; 2022

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF, Glomeromycota) are biotrophic mutualistic symbionts of 80% of the terrestrial plants. AMF increase their hosts? growth through its contribution to the water and nutrients absorption from soil to the plant roots. The different AMF taxa vary in their edaphic and nutritional preferences, the host species ranges and the seasonal changes in sporula-tion features. The increase in world human population and the global demand for natural re-sources have acted as an important driving force for agricultural changes in Argentina in the last 150 years. Particularly, the Prosopis caldenia Burkart forests (or "Caldenales") have suffered an important reduction in the last 10 years. Here, we studied AMF abundance and diversity in four land uses and their relationship with soil and vegetation characteristics. The land use selected were Native Forest (Caldenales), Eragrostis curvula (Schrad.) Nees pasture, Medicago sativa L. crop-field and soybean (Glicine max (L.) Merill) cropfield. AMF spores were extracted from soil by the traditional method and were identified by morphological features. Cluster analysis divided the land uses into two groups, Kruskal-Wallis show significant differences in AMF abundance and richness between land uses, AMF abundance and tree richness were negatively correlated, showing less abundance of AMF spores in the plots with the highest richness of tree species. Our results suggested that land use and vegetation richness have a strong influence on the AMF community. Agricultural activities would negatively influence AMF species diversity but would not affect negatively spores abundance.