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Inherited fungal symbionts enhance establishment of an invasive annual grass across successional habitats

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Abstract

Plants infected with vertically transmitted fungal endophytes carry their microbial symbionts with them during dispersal into new areas. Yet, whether seed-borne endophytes enhance the host plant’s ability to overcome colonisation barriers and to regenerate within invaded sites remains poorly understood. We examined how symbiosis with asexual endophytic fungi (Neotyphodium) affected establishment and seed loss to predators in the invasive annual grass Lolium multiflorum (Italian ryegrass) across contrasting successional plots. Italian ryegrass seeds with high and low endophyte incidence were sown into three communities: a 1-year-old fallow field, a 15-year-old grassland, and a 24-year-old forest, which conformed to an old-field chronosequence in the eastern Inland Pampa, Argentina. We found that endophyte infection consistently increased host population recruitment and reproductive output. Endophyte presence also enhanced aerial biomass production of ryegrass in a low recruitment year but not in a high recruitment year, suggesting that symbiotic effects on growth performance are density dependent. Endophyte presence reduced seed removal by rodents, although differential predation may not account for the increased success of infected grass populations. Overall, there was no statistical evidence for an endophyte-by-site interaction, indicating that the fungal endosymbiont benefitted host establishment regardless of large differences in biotic and abiotic environment among communities. Our results imply that hereditary endophytes may increase the chances for host grass species to pass various ecological filters associated with invasion resistance across a broad range of successional habitats.

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Acknowledgments

We thank P. Tognetti and I. Miranda for field assistance, and the Administración de Campos (UBA) for lodging and logistic support at Estancia San Claudio, and Stan Faeth for comments on the manuscript. The study was partly funded by Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica, Universidad de Buenos Aires and Fundación Antorchas. A U. was supported by a CONICET doctoral fellowship. The reported experiments comply with the current laws of Argentina.

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  1. IFEVA–CONICET and Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453, C1417DSE, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Andrea Uchitel, Marina Omacini & Enrique J. Chaneton

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  1. Andrea Uchitel
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  2. Marina Omacini
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  3. Enrique J. Chaneton
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Correspondence to Enrique J. Chaneton.

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Communicated by Melinda Smith.

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Uchitel, A., Omacini, M. & Chaneton, E.J. Inherited fungal symbionts enhance establishment of an invasive annual grass across successional habitats. Oecologia 165, 465–475 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1740-z

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