title: The composition of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities in the roots of a ruderal forb is not related to the forest fragmentation process.
abstract: Land-use changes and forest fragmentation have strong impact on biodiversity. However, little is known about the influence of new landscape configurations on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) community composition. We used 454 pyrosequencing to assess AMF diversity in plant roots from a fragmented forest. We detected 59 virtual taxa (VT; phylogenetically defined operational taxonomic units) of AMF - including 10 new VT - in the roots of Euphorbia acerensis. AMF communities were mainly composed of members of family Glomeraceae and were similar throughout the fragmented landscape, despite variation in forest fragment size (i.e. small, medium and large) and isolation (i.e. varying pairwise distances). AMF communities in forest fragments were phylogenetically clustered compared with the global, but not regional and local AMF taxon pools. This indicates that non-random community assembly processes possibly related to dispersal limitation at a large scale, rather than habitat filtering or biotic interactions, may be important in structuring the AMF communities. In this system, forest fragmentation did not appear to influence AMF community composition in the roots of the ruderal plant. Whether this is true for AMF communities in soil and the roots of other ecological groups of host plants or in other habitats deserves further study.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV- CONICET) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1611 Vélez Sarsfield, Córdoba, 5000, Argentina.|Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Grilli
authors.affiliation: Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV- CONICET) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1611 Vélez Sarsfield, Córdoba, 5000, Argentina.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Urcelay
authors.affiliation: Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV- CONICET) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1611 Vélez Sarsfield, Córdoba, 5000, Argentina.
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Galetto
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Davison
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: Martti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vasar
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: Ülle
authors.initials: Ü
authors.lastname: Saks
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: Teele
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jairus
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 40 Lai St., Tartu, 51005, Estonia.
authors.forename: Maarja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Öpik
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D044822:Biodiversity; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D028481:Euphorbia / Q000382:microbiology*; D065928:Forests; D005658:Fungi / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D055137:Glomeromycota / Q000235:genetics*; D064307:Microbiota; D038821:Mycorrhizae; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012987:Soil; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D012987:Soil