Abstract
Ecological corridors promote species coexistence in fragmented habitats where dispersal limits species fluxes. The corridor concept was developed and investigated with macroorganisms in mind, while microorganisms, the invisible majority of biodiversity, were disregarded. We analyzed the effect of corridors on the dynamics of endospheric fungal assemblages associated with plant roots at the scale of 1 m over 2 years (i.e. at five time points) by combining an experimental corridor-mesocosm with high-throughput amplicon sequencing. We showed that plant root endospheric mycobiota were sensitive to corridor effects when the corridors were set up at a small spatial scale. The endospheric mycobiota of connected plants had higher species richness, lower beta-diversity, and more deterministic assembly than the mycobiota of isolated plants. These effects became more pronounced with the development of host plants. Biotic corridors composed of host plants may thus play a key role in the spatial dynamics of microbial communities and may influence microbial diversity and related ecological functions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1347-1362 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | New Phytologist |
Volume | 237 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 8 Nov 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by regional aid for H2020‐MSCA‐IF projects 2019 Seal of Excellence–CORRiBIOM to JH, CM, and PV. We thank Remi Bodiguel and Thierry Fontaine from the ECOLEX platform for designing the mesocosms. We thank George A. Kowalchuk from the Ecology and Biodiversity group of Utrecht University and Ecobio members from University of Rennes 1 for helpful comments during departmental seminars. We thank Kathryn E. Barry from the Ecology and Biodiversity group of Utrecht University for proofreading this manuscript. We are grateful to GENTYANE and, within the ANAEE‐France research infrastructure, EcogenO platforms for help with DNA extraction and amplicon sequencing, respectively. We are also grateful to the Genotoul platform Toulouse Midi‐Pyrenees for access to FROGS pipeline and storage facilities.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2022 New Phytologist Foundation.
Keywords
- biotic homogenization
- endospheric fungi
- habitat fragmentation
- landscape ecology
- microbial dispersal