The fungal collaboration gradient dominates the root economics space in plants

By J. Bergmann, A. Weigelt, F. Plas, D. Laughlin, T. W. Kuyper, Nathaly R. Guerrero‐Ramírez, O. Valverde‐Barrantes, Helge Bruelheide, Grégoire T. Freschet, Colleen M. Iversen and 10 more. Science Advances, 2020

835 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Collaboration broadens the “root economics space” ranging from “do-it-yourself” to “outsourcing” to mycorrhizal partners. Plant economics run on carbon and nutrients instead of money. Leaf strategies aboveground span an economic spectrum from “live fast and die young” to “slow and steady,” but the economy defined by root strategies belowground remains unclear. Here, we take a holistic view of the belowground economy and show that root-mycorrhizal collaboration can short circuit a one-dimensional economic spectrum, providing an entire space of economic possibilities. Root trait data from 1810 species across the globe confirm a classical fast-slow “conservation” gradient but show that most variation is explained by an orthogonal “collaboration” gradient, ranging from “do-it-yourself” resource uptake to “outsourcing” of resource uptake to mycorrhizal fungi. This broadened “root economics space” provides a solid foundation for predictive understanding of belowground responses to changing environmental conditions.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3b662cf41526964a55b765b7d039f154009c2709

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. D. Laughlin
2. Peter B. Reich
3. C. Roumet
4. G. T. Freschet
5. J. H. C. Cornelissen
6. L. Mommer
7. J. van Ruijven
8. A. Weigelt

In Plant Science

1. L. Sack
2. Peter B. Reich
3. D. Laughlin
4. F. Valladares
5. C. Roumet
6. Bill Shipley
7. Juli G. Pausas
8. T. Kuyper

Citations in the corpus

• Patterns in intraspecific variation in root traits are species‐specific along an elevation gradient (2020, background): “Our results on intraspecific root trait variation at least partly agree with previous interspecific observations, whereby a multidimensional trait space allows the synonymous expression of a variety of strategies to respond to environmental drivers (Ding et al., 2020; Bergmann et al., 2020; McCormac”
• Global Root Traits (GRooT) Database (2020, background): “…relationships as known from aboveground approaches (Bruelheide et al., 2018), and detecting fundamental ecological patterns, such as the root economic space (Bergmann et al., 2020) or trade-offs and coordination among organs in the plant economic spectrum (Freschet et al., 2010).”