Umeå University's logo

umu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Opportunistic partner choice among arctic plants and root-associated fungi is driven by environmental conditions
Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark; Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Carex EcoLogics, Bracebridge, Canada.
Ecological Network Lab, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany.
Show others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Ecological Monographs, ISSN 0012-9615, E-ISSN 1557-7015, Vol. 95, no 3, article id e70038Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Interactions between plants and soil microbes play a key role in structuring plant communities. In a rapidly changing Arctic environment, we urgently need to uncover how these interactions are responding to environmental changes. Here, we disentangle two contributions to variation in plant–fungus interactions along geographic and environmental gradients of the Arctic: abiotic impacts on the pool of fungal species present in the soil, and abiotic and biotic impacts on variation in the pool of fungi associated with plant roots. Given the low species richness and harsh conditions in the Arctic, we expected opportunistic associations to emerge, along with strong impacts of the environment on interaction structure. Across multiple spatial scales, we sampled roots of 12 widely distributed plant taxa. To characterize the pool of species available for colonization, we quantified the pool of fungi present in the soil, and to characterize realized interactions, we quantified root-associated fungal communities. Data from DNA metabarcoding of each fungal community were modeled by Hierarchical Modeling of Species Communities (HMSC). To determine whether the realized networks deviated from random expectations, we compared the observed networks to those expected under null models. Overall, we found strong support for opportunistic associations, along with some level of selectivity. Fungal communities within the soil and rhizosphere shared 85% of their fungal genera, but the composition of these communities significantly differed among ecosystem compartments. The two compartments showed similar responses to the environment, with low levels of partner fidelity among both plant and fungal taxa. Plant–fungus networks showed a distinctly nonrandom structure, which was driven by gradients in pH and temperature. Across the Arctic, the structure of fungal communities in the plant rhizosphere is thus mainly driven by abiotic rather than by biotic conditions (i.e., host identity or microbes–microbes associations). Environmental conditions will dictate what interaction partners occur where, but interactions among locally occurring plants and fungi are dominated by opportunistic partner choice. Overall, our findings suggest that the dynamics and structure of plant–root-associated interactions will be altered by abiotic changes in the Arctic realm, and that the flexibility of associations may contribute to the resilience of the system.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
John Wiley & Sons, 2025. Vol. 95, no 3, article id e70038
Keywords [en]
Arctic, eDNA metabarcoding, Hierarchical Modeling of Species Communities (HMSC), network analyses, plant–fungus interactions, root-associated fungi, soil fungi
National Category
Ecology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-246014DOI: 10.1002/ecm.70038Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105019327558OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-246014DiVA, id: diva2:2010506
Funder
Academy of Finland, 322266-VEGAAvailable from: 2025-10-31 Created: 2025-10-31 Last updated: 2025-10-31Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(16507 kB)79 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 16507 kBChecksum SHA-512
dafbe2e66c97d79c36f14138d875af3ab1456ad3fcd652374a0fd2014a937192b7507e58d71173c080565107ef7d250bc2a08026a0f4acc3006575557c0a43e4
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Wirta, Helena

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Wirta, Helena
By organisation
Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
In the same journal
Ecological Monographs
Ecology

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 287 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf