The response of Aster amellus ( Asteraceae ) to mycorrhiza depends on the origins of both the soil and the fungi
Abstract
Previous studies testing pairwise interactions between plants, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and soil have shown that the effectiveness of such interactions depends on the origins of the plants, soil, and AMF. Surprisingly, no study has yet looked at the three-way interaction between plants, soil, and AMF originating from the same and from different sites.
Six populations of the obligately mycorrhizal plant species Aster amellus from two isolated regions were combined with the soil and the AMF ecotype from their sites and plant growth were monitored over 16 months. For each combination of soil and native AMF, plants grown with their native AMF in their native soil had higher aboveground biomass, invested more to aboveground biomass and had higher numbers of flower heads than the other plants.
The specificity of the relationship among plant populations, AMF, and soil was also observed for percentage of root colonization