Ecology and evolution of mycorrhizas

Radogast;2469162 said:

I tried reading some real science today.... tough sledding that is beyond me .... so I decided to quote an Editorial

New Phytologist
Special Issue: Ecology and evolution of mycorrhizas
Volume 205, Issue 4, pages 1369–1374, March 2015

Editorial
Evolving insights to understanding mycorrhizas


Almost all land plant species form a symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi. These soil fungi provide nutrients and other services to plants in return for plant carbohydrates. The recent application of microbial metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metabolomics to plants and their immediate surroundings confirms the key role of mycorrhizal fungi, rhizosphere bacteria and fungi, and suggests a world of hitherto undiscovered interactions (van der Heijden et al., this issue, pp. 1406–1423). This novel knowledge is leading to a paradigm-shifting view: plants cannot be considered as isolated individuals any more, but as metaorganisms, or holobionts (Hacquard & Schadt, this issue, pp. 1424–1430) encompassing an active microbial community re-programming host physiology (see Pozo et al., this issue, pp. 1431–1436). This bears tremendous implications for plant ecophysiology and evolution, plant breeding, crop management and sustainable ecosystem management.

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On the plant side, the mycorrhizal symbiosis is increasingly viewed as an ecological network, where shared fungal partners create a common mycorrhizal hyphal network (Bender et al., 2014) making each plant an indirect partner of its neighbors. Nutrient transfers are well known, as well as the imbalanced contribution of plant partners to mycorrhizal networks as compared to the benefit they gain, although the determinism for such outcome remains unclear (Walder et al., this issue, pp. 1632–1645). New functions are now discovered: plant defense signals can be transferred from one plant to another through mycorrhizal networks as conduits (Johnson & Gilbert, this issue, pp. 1488–1453). Plants connected to networks are subsequently better protected against insect herbivores and antagonistic herbivores. Although the mechanisms, and the evolutionary forces that shape such indirect collaborations remain unclear, it is now evident that the mycorrhizal fungal community blurs the limits of plant holobionts.

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Interesting phrase "plants cannot be considered as isolated individuals any more"

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