1. While both arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and plant and insect genotype are well known to influence plant and herbivore growth and performance, information is lacking on how these factors jointly influence the relationship between plants and their natural herbivores. 2. The aim of the present study was to investigate how a natural community of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi affects the grow...

the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on nitrogen concentration of berseem clover were examined in contaminated soil with cadmium. examined factors included: levels of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inoculation ( glomus mosseae ) (with and without inoculation), and different levels of soil contamination by cadmium (0, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 mg.kg-1). the results showed that the effects of cad...

The amount of carbon plants allocate to mycorrhizal symbionts exceeds that emitted by human activity annually. Senescent ectomycorrhizal roots represent a large input of carbon into soils, but their fate remains unknown. Here, we present the surprising result that, despite much higher nitrogen concentrations, roots colonized by ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi lost only one-third as much carbon as no...

The effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi on nitrogen concentration of berseem clover were examined in contaminated soil with cadmium. Examined factors included: levels of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inoculation (Glomus mosseae) (With and without inoculation), and different levels of soil contamination by cadmium (0, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 mg.kg-1). The results showed that the effects of cadmi...

Mycorrhizal fungi channel significant amounts of recently fixed plant carbon (C) through the soil, affecting a number of soil processes including the composition and activity of microbial communities and soil organic matter (SOM) mineralization. Some of the mycorrhizal fungi (particularly those establishing ecto-, ericoid and orchid mycorrhizas) can directly mineralize SOM, although often they ...

Nitrogen isotopes (N/N ratios, expressed as dN values) are useful markers of the mycorrhizal role in plant nitrogen supply because discrimination against N during creation of transfer compounds within mycorrhizal fungi decreases the N/N in plants (low dN) and increases the N/N of the fungi (high dN). Analytical models of N distribution would be helpful in interpreting dN patterns in fungi and p...

Effects of the mycorrhizal fungus Glomus intraradices on establishment of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.) seedlings in saline conditions were studied in a glasshouse experiment. Growth and nutrient uptake were determined 10, 20 and 30 days after transplanting of mycorrhizal and nonmycorrhizal matched seedlings into soils with five different levels of salinity. Mycorrhizal plants...

As the diversity of plants increases in an ecosystem, so does resource competition for soil nutrients, a process that mycorrhizal fungi can mediate. The influence of mycorrhizal fungi on plant biodiversity likely depends on the strength of the symbiosis between the plant and fungi, the differential plant growth responses to mycorrhizal inoculation, and the transfer rate of nutrients from the fu...

While it is generally acknowledged that orchid species rely on mycorrhizal fungi for completion of their life cycle, little is yet known about how mycorrhizal fungal diversity and community composition vary within and between closely related orchid taxa. In this study, we used 454 amplicon pyrosequencing to investigate variation in mycorrhizal communities between pure (allopatric) and mixed (sy...

BACKGROUND The stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal network may interact with many plants, providing the opportunity for individual plants to cheat by obtaining nutrients from the fungi without donating carbon. Here we determine whether kin selection may favour plant investmen...