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Effects of two grass species on the composition of soil fungal communities

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Abstract

Many studies have shown effects of plants species on fungal communities, but these are often confounded with soil effects. Thus, the specific role of plant species in structuring rhizospheric and soil fungal communities is poorly described. Our study used microcosms in which plants were grown under artificial conditions to bridge this gap. Two perennial grasses dominating subalpine grasslands, Festuca paniculata and Dactylis glomerata, were grown at two levels of fertilization on standard soil. Fungal communities were determined by 454 pyrosequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 1 region. Among the fungal communities characterized by the primers used, original communities were associated to each plant species and also diverged between rhizosphere and bulk soils within each plant species, though there were no significant fertilization effects. Differences regarded global composition of the fungal communities and abundant molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs). Both plant species and location effects were reflected more in the abundance than in the composition of MOTUs. The observed differences in fungal communities coincide with differing strategies of plant root growth, with D. glomerata having greater root mass, length, and area than F. paniculata. Our study, by dissociating soil effects from plant effects, demonstrated that plant species exert a key control on soil fungi. We suggest that such effects may be linked to inter-specific differences in root traits and their consequences on nitrogen uptake.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted on the long-term research site Zone Atelier Alpes, a member of the ILTER-Europe network. The authors are grateful to Nael Mouhamadou and Viviane Barbreau for their help, reading, and kind comments. The authors would like to thank A.F. Ameline, A.S. Desfeux, J. Bonnefoy, and R. Ségura for technical assistance. This study was conducted as part of ERA-Net BiodivERsA project VITAL, ANR-08-BDVA-008.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine, UMR 5553 UJF/CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier, BP 53, 38041, Grenoble cedex 9, France

    B. Mouhamadou, J. Puissant, L. Zinger, J. Roy, R. A. Geremia & S. Lavorel

  2. INRA, UMR950 Ecophysiologie Végétale Agronomie et nutrition N, C, S, 14032, Caen cedex, France

    E. Personeni & M. Desclos-Theveniau

  3. Research Unit for Environmental Genomics, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, 85758, Oberschleissheim, Germany

    E. M. Kastl & M. Schloter

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  1. B. Mouhamadou
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  2. J. Puissant
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  3. E. Personeni
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  4. M. Desclos-Theveniau
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  5. E. M. Kastl
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  7. L. Zinger
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  8. J. Roy
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  9. R. A. Geremia
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Correspondence to R. A. Geremia.

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Mouhamadou, B., Puissant, J., Personeni, E. et al. Effects of two grass species on the composition of soil fungal communities. Biol Fertil Soils 49, 1131–1139 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-013-0810-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-013-0810-x

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