Wooded meadows are seminatural plant communities that support high diversity of various taxa. Due to changes in land use, wooded meadows have severely declined during the last century. The dominant trees in wooded meadows acquire mineral nutrients via ectomycorrhizal fungi. Using anatomotyping and sequencing of root tips, interpolation and extrapolation methods, we studied the diversity and com...

Carbon cycle models often lack explicit belowground organism activity, yet belowground organisms regulate carbon storage and release in soil. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are important players in the carbon cycle because they are a conduit into soil for carbon assimilated by the plant. It is hypothesized that ectomycorrhizal fungi can also be active decomposers when plant carbon allocation to fungi is...

Oak savanna is one of the most endangered ecosystems of North America, with less than 0.02% of its original area remaining. Here we test whether oak savanna supports a unique community of ectomycorrhizal fungi, a higher diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi or a greater proportional abundance of ascomycete fungi compared with adjacent areas where the absence of fire has resulted in oak savanna con...

Mycelial growth and survival ratio of ectomycorrhizal fungi were determined after storage at -70℃ for 1, 3, or 6 mon. Seventeen of 23 ectomycorrhizal fungi did not survive after storage for more than 6 mon, whereas Cenococcum geophilum, Lepista nuda, and some species of Rhizopogon and Suillus did survive.

Root-associated fungi, including ectomycorrhizal and root-endophytic fungi, are among the most diverse and important belowground plant symbionts in dipterocarp rainforests. Our study aimed to reveal the biodiversity, host association, and community structure of ectomycorrhizal Basidiomycota and root-associated Ascomycota (including root-endophytic Ascomycota) in a lowland dipterocarp rainforest...

The effects of litter and humus layers on the occurrence of ectomycorrhizal sporocarps in 64 plots in six stands of Pinus sylcestris were studied. In 1990, litter and humus layers and herbaceous vegetation were removed ('sod-cutting') in plots in stands of Pinus sylvestris of different age. Removed litter and humus were added on to existing ectorganic layers ( 'sod-addition') in plots in young ...

We have investigated the mycorrhizal associations of two nonphotosynthetic orchids from distant tribes within the Orchidaceae. The two orchids were found to associate exclusively with two distinct clades of ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetous fungi over wide geographic ranges. Yet both orchids retained the internal mycorrhizal structure typical of photosynthetic orchids that do not associate with e...

Ectomycorrhizal fungi form symbioses with most temperate and boreal tree species, but difficulties in measuring carbon allocation to these symbionts have prevented the assessment of their importance in forest ecosystems. Here, I surveyed allocation patterns in 14 culture studies and five field studies of ectomycorrhizal plants. In culture studies, allocation to ectomycorrhizal fungi (NPPf) was ...

Like all obligately ectomycorrhizal plants, pines require ectomycorrhizal fungal symbionts to complete their life cycle. Pines introduced into regions far from their native range are typically incompatible with local ectomycorrhizal fungi, and, when they invade, coinvade with fungi from their native range. While the identities and distributions of coinvasive fungal symbionts of pine invasions a...

With improvements in molecular techniques, identification of taxa in mycorrhizal ecology has expanded from fruitbodies to mycorrhizal roots to extraradical hyphae (Anderson & Cairney, 2004). These molecular techniques are, in general, equally applicable to saprotrophic fungi, although this important functional group has received relatively little focus in community studies (Allmer et al ., 2006...