Mycorrhizal response trades off with plant growth rate and increases with plant successional status

Abstract

Early-successional plant species invest in rapid growth and reproduction in contrast to slow growing late-successional species. We test the consistency of trade-offs between plant life history and responsiveness on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. We selected four very early-, seven early-, 11 middle-, and eight late-successional plant species from six different families and functional groups and grew them with and without a mixed fungal inoculum and compared root architecture, mycorrhizal responsiveness, and plant growth rate. Our results indicate mycorrhizal responsiveness increases with plant successional stage and that this effect explains more variation in mycorrhizal response than is explained by phylogenetic relatedness. The mycorrhizal responsiveness of individual plant species was positively correlated with mycorrhizal root infection and negatively correlated with average plant mass and the number of root tips per unit mass, indicating that both plant growth rate and root architecture trade off with investment in mycorrhizal mutualisms. Because latesuccessional plants are very responsive to mycorrhizal fungi, our results suggest that fungal community dynamics may be an important driver of plant succession.