Mycorrhizal joy in the Amazon: a Meeting Report of the III International Symposium on Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in South America

PEÑA-VENEGAS C.; POLICELLI N.; MUJICA M.I.; LUGO M. A.; SILVA FLORES P.; BUENO C.G.; DUCHICELA J.; PEZZANI F.; MANLEY B.F.; CORRALES A.; NEVES M.A.; VASCO-PALACIOS A. M.; MARÍN C.

IMS Newsletter

International Mycorrhiza Society

Lugar: Okanagan; Año: 2023 vol. 4 p. 19 - 28

2563-1497

The South American Mycorrhizal Research Network (https://southmycorrhizas.org/) was created in Valdivia, Chile, in March 2017 and currently boasts 406 members from 50 countries. The South American Mycorrhizal Research Network is a horizontal scientific community directed towards the progress of mycorrhizal applications, research, and public outreach in South America. Since its creation, the Network has organized three international symposia (Valdivia, Chile in 2017; Bariloche, Argentina in 2019; and the one we are reporting here, Leticia, Colombia, 2023), an online workshop, and three symposia within the Latin American Congress of Mycology (in Perú, Chile, and Panamá). In addition, it has published five scientific articles, two Springer books edited by Mónica A. Lugo and Marcela C. Pagano, and a special issue in the journal Diversity (https://southmycorrhizas.org/about/publications/). We have a dedicated team (South American Mycorrhizal Traits Database) leading the vast and important task of generating a database on mycorrhizal traits for South America. In addition, we regularly release interviews on YouTube featuring mycorrhizologists at all career stages (https://southmycorrhizas.org/reading/), provide outreach tools (https://southmycorrhizas.org/outreach/), and collaborate with various other networks and Latin American and global scientific societies (e.g. FAO, Soil-BON, Latin American Mycology Association, SPUN) and scientific journals. Notably, we collaborate strongly with the IMS Newsletter ( https://southmycorrhizas.org/ims-newsletter/). Interested people can join our Network here: https://southmycorrhizas.org/join/ Since the creation of the Network, it became clear that despite South America´s vast size, biodiversity, and an increasing number of mycologists and ecologists specializing in mycorrhizae, mycorrhizal research on the continent needs to be substantially expanded. We identified three main reasons for the regional shortfall in mycorrhizal research: insufficient funding across South American nations with the absence of a unified mechanism for conducting continental-scale research (as seen in the European Union or the United States), a demand for more robust training in sampling, statistical, molecular, and bioinformatic methods, especially among young researchers and students, and a lack of comprehensive information on plant mycorrhizal traits across several biomes and countries. In turn, we have observed research biases about certain mycorrhizal types (with orchid and ericoid mycorrhizas generally overlooked compared to arbuscular or ectomycorrhizas), ecosystem functions (with a predominant focus on plant growth), and concentration of research in specific countries (with Brazil, Argentina, and Chile accounting for 80% of regional mycorrhizal research). Our Network knows such biases and works directly and powerfully to combat them. Recently, it was estimated that more than 9,200 tree species worldwide are yet to be discovered, 40% of them in South America! This underscores the imperative for foundational, methodical research within our continent, beginning with the systematic collection of mycorrhizal-type information as a baseline.