Children are taught to depart wild mushrooms alone due to their toxicity. But trees, alternatively, depend upon fungi for his or her well-being. Look no further than ectomycorrhizal fungi, that are organisms that colonize the roots of many tree species in boreal ecosystems (the northernmost forested zone on Earth) and temperate ecosystems (between the tropical and boreal regions). zone) meet. The area comprises a mixture of boreal trees including needle-leaved evergreen and temperate tree species including maple and oak.
Like a healthy human relationship, trees and fungi work well together because they support one another. When ectomycorrhizal fungi attach themselves to tree roots, they obtain carbon from their tree hosts in the shape of sugars and in turn supply the trees with vital nutrients similar to nitrogen and phosphorus. It is a very important symbiotic relationship that drives ecosystem function and resilience.
But as climate change and global warming cause higher temperatures and droughts, little is thought about how these vital fungi will respond. Additionally, there are lingering questions on how climate warming will affect underground threads — often called ectomycorrhizal networks. – Formed by fungi that binds trees together and facilitates the transfer of water, nitrogen and other minerals.
To investigate this issue, a research team from Syracuse University and the University of Minnesota conducted a climate change experiment where they exposed boreal and temperate tree species to heat and drought treatments to higher adapt to climate change. To understand how fungi and their tree hosts reply to environmental changes.
The study, led by Christopher W. Fernandez, assistant professor of biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, was recently published within the journal (). Their findings suggest that the combined effects of warmth and water stress are prone to result in major disruption of ectomycorrhizal networks and will harm forest resilience and performance.
The team conducted their work on a long-term climate change experiment in Minnesota called B4WARMED (Boreal Forest Warming on the Endangered Ecotone). The experiment included plots where each boreal and temperate tree species were planted and exposed to heat and drought treatments. This allows researchers to explore how ectomycorrhizal fungi and the networks they form with their tree hosts reply to environmental stresses.
Fernández, whose research goals to know processes involving plant, microbial and ecosystem ecology, says his studies have shown that ectomycorrhizal fungal species composition changes dramatically with climate change. Is. In particular, they observed a shift from species typically present in mature forests to those with higher biomass mycelium (the thread-like body of the fungus that explores the soil and is prone to form a network). is very important) towards low biomass species which can be normally more abundant. disturbed ecosystem.
“There is a supported hypothesis that these low-biomass species probably do not provide much nutritional benefit to the host,” says Fernandez. “We found that the networks formed by the fungi that 'connect' the trees shifted from relatively complex and well-connected networks to networks that are simpler with fewer connections.”
These changes were significantly related to the tree hosts' performance and talent to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars through photosynthesis, the authors say. “Climate change is reducing the amount of carbon in trees and likely has an impact on how much carbon they can provide to their ectomycorrhizal fungi,” Fernandez continues. “This is likely leading to a shift towards low-biomass species, which in turn breaks down the network between trees.”
The research team believes that is the primary study to look at the response of ectomycorrhizal networks to climate change and their findings should generate recent research specializing in other ecosystems. Building on this work, he says the subsequent step might be to link changes in ectomycorrhizal networks to ecosystem-level processes similar to nutrient and carbon cycling to higher understand how they're changing. How resilient are they to climate?