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. 2021 Dec 17:12:804861.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.804861. eCollection 2021.

Phylogenetic Correlation and Symbiotic Network Explain the Interdependence Between Plants and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in a Tibetan Alpine Meadow

Qiang Dong  1 , Xin Guo  1 , Keyu Chen  1 , Shijie Ren  1 , Muhammad Atif Muneer  2 , Jing Zhang  1 , Yaoming Li  1 , Baoming Ji  1
Affiliations

Phylogenetic Correlation and Symbiotic Network Explain the Interdependence Between Plants and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in a Tibetan Alpine Meadow

Qiang Dong et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can form complex symbiotic networks based on functional trait selection, contributing to the maintenance of ecosystem biodiversity and stability. However, the selectivity of host plants on AMF and the characteristics of plant-AMF networks remain unclear in Tibetan alpine meadows. In this study, we studied the AMF communities in 69 root samples from 23 plant species in a Tibetan alpine meadow using Illumina-MiSeq sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene. The results showed a significant positive correlation between the phylogenetic distances of plant species and the taxonomic dissimilarity of their AMF community. The plant-AMF network was characterized by high connectance, high nestedness, anti-modularity, and anti-specialization, and the phylogenetic signal from plants was stronger than that from AMF. The high connected and nested plant-AMF network potentially promoted the interdependence and stability of the plant-AMF symbioses in Tibetan alpine meadows. This study emphasizes that plant phylogeny and plant-AMF networks play an important role in the coevolution of host plants and their mycorrhizal partners and enhance our understanding of the interactions between aboveground and belowground communities.

Keywords: Tibetan alpine meadow; arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; community dissimilarity; host selectivity; phylogenetic distance; plant species; symbiotic network.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Phylogenetic tree of 23 plants species constructed using Phylomatic. The detailed information of the 23 plant species is shown including their abbreviation, genus, and families.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Differences in Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) colonization (A); OTU Shannon-Wiener diversity index (B); and OTU richness (C) of 23 plant roots. Al: Ajuga lupulina; Lr: Lamiophlomis rotata; Dh: Dracocephalum heterophyllum; Lt: Lancea tibetica; Pd: Plantago depressa; Sa: Saussurea tibetica; Tt: Taraxacum tibetanum; An: Artemisia nanschanica; Hs: Heteropappus semiprostratus; Lp: Leontopodium pusillum; Mk: Morina kokonorica; Ps: Polygonum sibiricum; St: Stracheya tibetica; Pb: Potentilla bifurca; Pa: Potentilla anserina; Pt: Poa tibetica; Sp: Stipa purpurea; En: Elymus nutans; Cm: Carex moorcroftii; Kt: Kobresia tibetica; Kp: Kobresia pygmaea; Kh: Kobresia humilis; Ip: Iris potaninii.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Composition of AMF genera in roots of 23 plant roots. Al: Ajuga lupulina; Lr: Lamiophlomis rotata; Dh: Dracocephalum heterophyllum; Lt: Lancea tibetica; Pd: Plantago depressa; Sa: Saussurea tibetica; Tt: Taraxacum tibetanum; An: Artemisia nanschanica; Hs: Heteropappus semiprostratus; Lp: Leontopodium pusillum; Mk: Morina kokonorica; Ps: Polygonum sibiricum; St: Stracheya tibetica; Pb: Potentilla bifurca; Pa: Potentilla anserina; Pt: Poa tibetica; Sp: Stipa purpurea; En: Elymus nutans; Cm: Carex moorcroftii; Kt: Kobresia tibetica; Kp: Kobresia pygmaea; Kh: Kobresia humilis; Ip: Iris potaninii.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations of AMF taxonomic (A) and phylogenetic (B) community composition of 23 plant roots.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Relationships between the phylogenetic distance of 23 plant species and their corresponding AMF taxonomic (A) and phylogenetic (B) community dissimilarity tested by linear regression and mantel test.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Heat map of plant-AMF association frequency matrix combined with the phylogenetic tree. Different shades of color denote the association frequency between different plant species and AMF OTUs, and blue denotes an absence of association.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
The characteristics of different plant-AMF networks. Weight connectance (A), WNODF (B), H2′ (C), modularity (D), checkerboard score fungus [(E), degree of avoiding overlapping of plants in the fungal community], and checkerboard score plant [(F), degree of avoiding overlapping of fungi in the plant community]. Asterisks indicate significant differences between the observed and expected values according to the t-test (***P < 0.001; bars indicate SE).
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