Darkness visible: reflections on underground ecology

By A. Fitter. 2005

309 citations recorded by the source corpus.

1 Soil science and ecology have developed independently, making it difficult for ecologists to contribute to urgent current debates on the destruction of the global soil resource and its key role in the global carbon cycle. Soils are believed to be exceptionally biodiverse parts of ecosystems, a view confirmed by recent data from the UK Soil Biodiversity Programme at Sourhope, Scotland, where high diversity was a characteristic of small organisms, but not of larger ones. Explaining this difference requires knowledge that we currently lack about the basic biology and biogeography of micro‐organisms. 2 It seems inherently plausible that the high levels of biological diversity in soil play some part in determining the ability of soils to undertake ecosystem‐level processes, such as carbon and mineral cycling. However, we lack conceptual models to address this issue, and debate about the role of biodiversity in ecosystem processes has centred around the concept of functional redundancy, and has consequently been largely semantic. More precise construction of our experimental questions is needed to advance understanding. 3 These issues are well illustrated by the fungi that form arbuscular mycorrhizas, the Glomeromycota. This ancient symbiosis of plants and fungi is responsible for phosphate uptake in most land plants, and the phylum is generally held to be species‐poor and non‐specific, with most members readily colonizing any plant species. Molecular techniques have shown both those assumptions to be unsafe, raising questions about what factors have promoted diversification in these fungi. One source of this genetic diversity may be functional diversity. 4 Specificity of the mycorrhizal interaction between plants and fungi would have important ecosystem consequences. One example would be in the control of invasiveness in introduced plant species: surprisingly, naturalized plant species in Britain are disproportionately from mycorrhizal families, suggesting that these fungi may play a role in assisting invasion. 5 What emerges from an attempt to relate biodiversity and ecosystem processes in soil is our extraordinary ignorance about the organisms involved. There are fundamental questions that are now answerable with new techniques and sufficient will, such as how biodiverse are natural soils? Do microbes have biogeography? Are there rare or even endangered microbes?

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37c6e7e1bef6a338bb18d3c0b62d517d92ab3a9b

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Citations in the corpus

Sequences, the environment and fungi (2006, background): “…the extensive genetic diversity of the arbuscular mycorrhiza, their plant specificities and extended roles in carbon, nitrogen, as well as phosphorus nutrient cycling (Fitter 2005); and the relationships that exist between ectomycorrhizal fungi, forest trees and orchids (Bidartondo et al. 2004).”
Plant performance in stressful environments: interpreting new and established knowledge of the roles of arbuscular mycorrhizas (2009, background): “…(AM) symbioses are the most frequent symbiotic plant adaptation for plant growth in low-P soils; they occur in nearly all terrestrial plant ecosystems worldwide and involve probably as many as 80% of vascular plant species, together with a conservative estimate of 150 fungal species (Fitter 2005).”
454‐sequencing reveals stochastic local reassembly and high disturbance tolerance within arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities (2012, background): “Fitter (2005) even suggested that the fungal species richnessmay rival that of plant species richness within communities, and this was recently supported within a 100-m boreal forest that hosted 47 fungal OTUs and an equivalent number of plant species (Öpik et al.”
Root competition: beyond resource depletion (2006, background): “Species-specific associations between soil fungi or microbes and plant roots may be products of co-evolution and may play integral parts in root interactions between species (Fitter 2005; Wolfe & Klironomos 2005).”
Do native and invasive plants differ in their interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi? A meta‐analysis (2015, background): “Surveys have also shown that the proportion of AM plants is higher among invasive than native plants in some areas (Fitter 2005; Hempel et al. 2013).”
Leaf endophytes affect mycorrhizal status and growth of co‐infected and neighbouring plants (2006, background): “Faeth & Sullivan 2003) and, via AM fungi, a supply of limiting mineral nutrients (Smith & Read 1997; but cf. Munkvold et al . 2004; Fitter 2005; Morgan, Bending & White 2005).”
Composition of root‐colonizing arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities in different ecosystems around the globe (2006, background): “150 described Glomeromycota species provides further support to the view that there is still a large undiscovered diversity of Glomeromycota (Helgason et al. 2002; Fitter 2005).”
Comparisons of Mycorrhizal Responsiveness with Field Soil and Commercial Inoculum for Six Native Montane Species and Bromus tectorum (2007, background): “For example, a low or negative mycorrhizal responsiveness may suggest that a plant will have higher success in a disturbed community with fewer AMF propagules and not be as competitive in later seral conditions with a healthy mycorrhizal community (sensu Fitter 2005).”
Role of Mycorrhizal Symbioses in Phosphorus Cycling (2011, background): “(Fitter 2005; Graham 2001; Newsham et al. 1995; Toljander et al. 2007).”
Root-colonizing and soil-borne communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in a temperate forest understorey1 (2014, background): “Because these effects depend on local AMF community composition, there is now increasing interest in describing and explaining the distribution of AMF diversity (Fitter 2005; van der Heijden and Scheublin 2007; Turrini and Giovannetti 2012; Öpik et al. 2013).”
The freezer defrosting: global warming and litter decomposition rates in cold biomes (2006, background): “Thus, more light should be shed on the below-ground ‘darkness’ (cf. Fitter 2005) to evaluate the ecological significance of warming-induced soil fauna community changes for litter decomposition processes.”