Fire‑severity effects on plant–fungal interactions after a novel tundra wildfire disturbance: implications for arctic shrub and tree migration

Published by Ecoss on

Background: Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wild-fire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recruitment, yet fire also alters soil microbial composition, which could significantly impact seedling establishment.
Results: We investigated the effects of fire severity on soil biota and associated effects on plant performance for two plant species predicted to expand into Arctic tundra. We inoculated seedlings in a growth chamber experiment with soils collected from the largest tundra fire recorded in the Arctic and used molecular tools to characterize root-associated fungal communities. Seedling biomass was significantly related to the composition of fungal inoculum. Biomass decreased as fire severity increased and the proportion of pathogenic fungi increased.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that effects of fire severity on soil biota reduces seedling performance and thus we hypothesize that in certain ecological contexts fire-severity effects on plant–fungal interactions may dampen the expected increases in tree and shrub establishment after tundra fire.
Keywords: Alnus viridis, Arctic tundra, ARISA, Climate change, Fire severity, Fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS), Picea mariana, Shrub expansion, Treeline

 

Categories:

Related Posts

A CIRCUIT SHOWS HOW CLIMATE WARMING MAY ALTER DIFFERENT ECOLOGICAL LEGACIES IN THE ARCTIC BOREAL FOREST, WHICH THEN FEEDBACK INTO CLIMATE WARMING AND CHANGES TO LANDSCAPE PROCESSES.

NAU-led research team receives $9.6M to study how Alaska’s forests change, adapt to warmer future

Ecological memory stored in a landscape can help an ecosystem recover from disturbances like fire and outbreaks of disease. But what happens when climate warming disrupts that process? How long before ecological memories stored in Read more…

A SCATTERPLOT DEPICTS HOW MUCH CARBON OR OXYGEN ISOTOPE DIFFERENT SOIL BACTERIA TOOK INTO THEIR DNA (A PROXY FOR GROWTH) DURING A 7-DAY EXPERIMENT. SMALL POINTS REPRESENT THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUAL BACTERIAL STRAINS LINKED BY LINES TO THE AVERAGE GROWTH OF THEIR CLOSEST IDENTIFIED GENUS. COLORS WERE ASSIGNED BY A CLUSTERING ALGORITHM TO GROUP GENERA INTO FAST-GROWING OR SLOW-GROWING LIFESTYLES.

Lifestyles of the fast and slow (bacteria): In the wild, most live in the slow lane

A study led by Northern Arizona University offers new evidence that a common framework to sort bacteria into two lifestyles doesn’t easily apply to bacteria living in wild soil. The findings, published in The ISME Journal, show Read more…

A trio of illustrated panels depicts the soil microbial communities in three treatments of a long-term warming experiment north of Flagstaff, Arizona. The panels are labeled in gray text, left to right: control, short-term warming, long-term warming. The control treatment, far left, depicts bacteria, protists, and other microorganisms identified by sequencing the soil’s metagenome in yellow, orange, green, and blue, along with chains of available nutrients. Soil depicted in the center panel, which has undergone short-term warming, shows an increased abundance and diversity of microbes, some of which are growing, incorporating nutrients, and respiring carbon dioxide. The soil that has undergone long-term warming, imagined in the panel on the right, shows fewer microbial species and competitive relationships that are developing for control of the scarcer nutrients.

Does a warmer future favor microbial friend or foe? Ecoss researchers win $3.4M to study interactions in changing soil

In 2002, the Odyssey probe discovered evidence of past ice on Mars. The U.S. Congress authorized the Iraq War resolution. The Anaheim Angels won the World Series. And in a meadow 15 miles north of Read more…