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

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

Basilea

Congreso; 2nd International Electronic Conference on Diversity (IECD 2022): New Insights into the Biodiversity of Plants, Animals and Microbes; 2022

MDPI, Diversity

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMFs, Glomeromycota) are biotrophic mutualistic symbiontsof 80% of terrestrial plants. AMFs increase their hosts’ growth through their contribution towater and nutrient absorption from the soil to the plant roots. The different AMF taxa vary in theiredaphic and nutritional preferences, the host species ranges and the seasonal changes in sporulationfeatures. The increase in the world human population and the global demand for natural resourceshave 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 reductionin the last 10 years. Here, we studied AMF abundance and diversity in four land uses andtheir relationship with soil and vegetation characteristics. The land uses selected were native forest(Caldenales), Eragrostis curvula (Schrad.) Nees pasture, Medicago sativa L. cropfield and soybean(Glycine max (L.) Merill) cropfield. AMF spores were extracted from soil by the traditional methodand were identified by their morphological features. Cluster analysis divided the land uses intotwo groups; Kruskal–Wallis tests showed significant differences in AMF abundance and richnessbetween land uses; the AMF abundance and tree richness were negatively correlated, showing lessabundance of AMF spores in the plots with the highest richness of tree species. Our results suggestthat land use and vegetation richness have a strong influence on the AMF community. Agriculturalactivities would negatively influence the AMF species diversity but would not negatively affect thespore abundance.