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Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Mediate Grazing Effects on Seasonal Soil Nitrogen Fluxes in a Steppe Ecosystem

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Abstract

Grazing and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) influence soil nitrogen (N) cycling in grassland ecosystems. However, it remains unclear whether AMF mediate grazing effects on soil N cycling. We investigated the influence of benomyl (a broad-range fungicide) application to suppress AMF on soil N fluxes under different levels of grazing intensity in a steppe ecosystem on the Mongolia plateau. In situ soil core incubation method was used during both growing and non-growing seasons. Benomyl application to suppress AMF remarkably stimulated the net nitrification rate across all grazing intensities during the growing season. Benomyl application exerted a negative effect on soil N fluxes and/or N pools under no to moderate levels of grazing and a positive effect under heavy grazing during the growing season. The responses of amino acid and inorganic N stocks to grazing differed substantially between growing and non-growing seasons. The accumulation of amino acid in grazed plots (especially heavily grazed plots) during the non-growing season enhances the substrate availability for microbes in the early growing season of the following year. Our study provides field evidence that N losses are controlled to some extent by AMF and suggests a mechanism that grazing may affect soil N cycling through changing the AMF-plant symbiosis and therefore the interactions between AMF and other microbes. The findings improve our understanding of the effects of grazing and AMF on seasonal dynamics of different N forms and N pools in semiarid grassland.

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Data Availability

Data are available from the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station (IMGERS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://nmg.cern.ac.cn/).

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate Shuijin Hu and Wim H. van der Putten for comments and suggestions on an early version of our manuscript. We thank the staff at the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station (IMGERS), Chinese Academy of Sciences for their help with field sampling. This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31630010, 31320103916).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20 Nanxincun, Xiangshan, Beijing, 100093, China

    Bo Tang, Jing Man, Ruoyu Jia, Yang Wang & Yongfei Bai

  2. College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China

    Bo Tang, Jing Man & Ruoyu Jia

  3. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yongfei Bai

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  1. Bo Tang
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  2. Jing Man
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  3. Ruoyu Jia
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  4. Yang Wang
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Correspondence to Yongfei Bai.

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Author Contributions

YB conceived the study; BT conducted the experimental treatment and field sampling; BT and JM conducted the laboratory analysis; BT, JM, RJ, YW and YB analyzed the data and contributed to the manuscript writing.

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Tang, B., Man, J., Jia, R. et al. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Mediate Grazing Effects on Seasonal Soil Nitrogen Fluxes in a Steppe Ecosystem. Ecosystems 24, 1171–1183 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-020-00575-8

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