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Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi reduce the differences in competitiveness between dominant and subordinate plant species

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Abstract

In grassland communities, plants can be classified as dominants or subordinates according to their relative abundances, but the factors controlling such distributions remain unclear. Here, we test whether the presence of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus Glomus intraradices affects the competitiveness of two dominant (Taraxacum officinale and Agrostis capillaris) and two subordinate species (Prunella vulgaris and Achillea millefolium). Plants were grown in pots in the presence or absence of the fungus, in monoculture and in mixtures of both species groups with two and four species. In the absence of G. intraradices, dominants were clearly more competitive than subordinates. In inoculated pots, the fungus acted towards the parasitic end of the mutualism–parasitism continuum and had an overall negative effect on the growth of the plant species. However, the negative effects of the AM fungus were more pronounced on dominant species reducing the differences in competitiveness between dominant and subordinate species. The effects of G. intraradices varied with species composition highlighting the importance of plant community to mediate the effects of AM fungi. Dominant species were negatively affected from the AM fungus in mixtures, while subordinates grew identically with and without the fungus. Therefore, our findings predict that the plant dominance hierarchy may flatten out when dominant species are more reduced than subordinate species in an unfavourable AM fungal relationship (parasitism).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Marcel van der Heijden and Charlotte Vandenberghe for their significant input in this project; PRIMPLANTS SA for the glasshouse accommodation; and Lionel Lobrutto, Grégory Bernard, Claire Guenat, Géraldine Bullinger, Justine Mariotte, David Parietti, Didier Burkhalter, Jean-David Teuscher and Elena Rossel for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number 31003A-114139).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), Laboratory of Ecological Systems (ECOS), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Station 2, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Pierre Mariotte, Claire Meugnier, Aurélie Thébault, Thomas Spiegelberger & Alexandre Buttler

  2. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Site Lausanne, Station 2, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Pierre Mariotte, Aurélie Thébault & Alexandre Buttler

  3. Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Cruickshank Building, St Machar Drive, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK

    David Johnson

  4. Irstea, Research Unit Mountain Ecosystems (UR EMGR), 2 rue de la Papeterie, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, BP 76, 38402, Grenoble, France

    Thomas Spiegelberger

  5. Laboratoire de Chrono-Environnement, UMR CNRS 6249, UFR des Sciences et Techniques, Université de Franche-Comté, 16 route de Gray, 25030, Besançon, France

    Alexandre Buttler

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  1. Pierre Mariotte
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  2. Claire Meugnier
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Correspondence to Pierre Mariotte.

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Mariotte, P., Meugnier, C., Johnson, D. et al. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi reduce the differences in competitiveness between dominant and subordinate plant species. Mycorrhiza 23, 267–277 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-012-0465-8

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