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Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community response to warming and nitrogen addition in a semiarid steppe ecosystem

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Abstract

Understanding the response of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi to warming and nitrogen (N) fertilization is critical to assess the impact of anthropogenic disturbance on ecosystem functioning under global climate change scenarios. In this study, AM fungal communities were examined in a full factorial design with warming and N addition in a semiarid steppe in northern China. Warming significantly increased AM fungal spore density, regardless of N addition, whilst N addition significantly decreased AM fungal extraradical hyphal density, regardless of warming. A total of 79 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of AM fungi were recovered by 454 pyrosequencing of SSU rDNA. Warming, but not N addition, had a significant positive effect on AM fungal OTU richness, while warming and N addition significantly increased AM fungal Shannon diversity index. N addition, but not warming, significantly altered the AM fungal community composition. Furthermore, the changes in AM fungal community composition were associated with shifts in plant community composition indirectly caused by N addition. These findings highlight the different effects of warming and N addition on AM fungal communities and contribute to understanding AM fungal community responses to global environmental change scenarios in semiarid steppe ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31070434, 30592005) and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-EW-J-6). The authors thank Dr. Xinyu Zhang in the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for bioinformatics analyses, and Dr. Jo Taylor from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh for language editing and comments during manuscript writing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yong-Chan Kim, Cheng Gao, Yong Zheng, Wei Yang, Liang Chen & Liang-Dong Guo

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yong-Chan Kim

  3. School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Xin-Hua He

  4. School of Life Science, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475001, China

    Shi-Qiang Wan

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  1. Yong-Chan Kim
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  2. Cheng Gao
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  3. Yong Zheng
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  4. Xin-Hua He
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  5. Wei Yang
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Correspondence to Liang-Dong Guo.

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Yong-Chan Kim and Cheng Gao contributed equally

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Fig. S1

Neighbor joining analysis of SSU rDNA of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal OTUs obtained in the study with reference sequences of Glomeromycota from GenBank in MEGA. The phylogram is rooted with an outgroup Archaeospora trappei. The GenBank accession number of reference sequences and the sequence name of OTUs obtained in this study are given in parentheses. Bar indicates 0.01 expected changes per site (GIF 401 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 4379 kb)

Table S1

Plant and soil variables in control (C), warming (W), nitrogen addition (N) and W plus N (WN) in a semiarid steppe (DOCX 12 kb)

Table S2

Barcode sequences in the raw sequence data of the 24 samples used in the study (DOCX 11 kb)

Table S3

Principle component analysis (PCA) of plant community composition in a semiarid steppe (DOCX 17 kb)

Table S4

Mantel tests among distance matrices (DOCX 15 kb)

Table S5

Abundance (read numbers) of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal OTUs in every plot (XLSX 20 kb)

Table S6

Frequency of AM fungal OTUs recovered in this study (DOCX 20 kb)

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Kim, YC., Gao, C., Zheng, Y. et al. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community response to warming and nitrogen addition in a semiarid steppe ecosystem. Mycorrhiza 25, 267–276 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-014-0608-1

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