OOS 40: Mycorrhizal Symbiosis and Ecosystem Process: Breakthroughs Across Scales

Session Organizer(s)

• Colin Averill

  Department of Environmental Systems Sciences, ETH Zürich
  Zürich, MA, Switzerland

Moderator(s)

• Colin Averill

  Department of Environmental Systems Sciences, ETH Zürich
  Zürich, MA, Switzerland

Volunteer(s)

• Molly Reichenborn

  New Mexico State University

Most plants on Earth form a symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi. This vital connection between plants and fungi stretches back over 400 million years, and continues to shape plant species interactions and ecosystem processes. In many ways, the mycorrhizal symbiosis has become a model for understanding how microbial life shapes the macro-biological world. In this session mycorrhizal ecologists will present research that is truly pushing the boundaries of our understanding of mycorrhizal symbiosis, and its consequences for plant and fungal biogeography and ecosystem function. Several scientists are taking advantage of new molecular approaches to shed light on previously untestable hypotheses. Others are making new connections across scales, highlighting how molecular interactions among plants and mycorrhizal fungi have ecosystem consequences that ripple out across the landscape. By bringing these diverse approaches together, we hope to inspire our audience to draw new connections between plants, fungi and the Earth.

Presentations:

• ON DEMAND

  Are interactions between ectomycorrhizal fungi and saprotrophic fungi driven by soil pH constraints on enzyme function?
  

  Presenting Author: Christopher Fernandez – Plant & Microbial Biology, University of Minnesota
• ON DEMAND

  Ectomycorrhizal fungal communities and functional genes drive forest productivity
  

  Presenting Author: Mark A. Anthony – Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich
• ON DEMAND

  Mycorrhizal traits inform dispersal and symbiotic function across scales
  

  Presenting Author: Bala Chaudhary – Department of Environmental Science and Studies, DePaul University
• ON DEMAND

  Pine invasions linked to the invasiveness of their ectomycorrhizal fungal symbionts
  

  Presenting Author: Nahuel Policelli – Department of Biology, Boston University
• ON DEMAND

  Relationship between forest mycorrhizal type and nitrogen-cycling functions of soil microbial communities: Implications from the rhizosphere scale to the ecosystem scale
  

  Presenting Author: Chikae Tatsumi – Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University
• ON DEMAND

  Stem radial growth of host trees is not sustained after thirteen years of nitrogen addition but the abundance of high-biomass ectomycorrhizal fungi doubles
  

  Presenting Author: Justine Karst – Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta