The forest floor (FF) plays a key role in carbon, nutrient, and water cycling. It is the biologically most active compartment of forest soils, highly responsive to environmental conditions. Yet, its response to current changes in environmental conditions and forest management is understudied. Temperate forests are among the best studied ecosystems globally, providing the necessary ecological and biogeochemical background infor...

Aims Forests across the world are subject to disturbance via wind, wildfire, and pest and disease outbreaks. Yet we still have an incomplete understanding of how these stressors impact forest biota—particularly the soil microbes, which govern forest carbon and nutrient cycling. Methods Here, we investigated the impact of a severe windstorm on soil bacterial communities in Kielder Forest, a temperate coniferous forest in the no...

Aim We used two fungal data sources for occurrence records (fruitbodies and roots) to (1) test the influence of data source on estimating the environmental niche of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi and (2) compare the differences in estimated niche area and density for ECM fungal species with conspicuous (easily observed, i.e. mushrooms) versus inconspicuous (difficult to observe and/or usually overlooked, i.e. crusts and truffles)...

Aim Ecoregions and the distance decay in community similarity are fundamental concepts in biogeography and conservation biology that are well supported across plants and animals, but not fungi. Here we test the relevance of these concepts for ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi in temperate and boreal regions. Location Europe. Time Period 2008–2015. Major Taxa Studied Ectomycorrhizal fungi. Methods We used a large dataset of ~24,000 e...

Non-vascular plants associating with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AMF) and Mucoromycotina ‘fine root endophyte’ (MFRE) fungi derive greater benefits from their fungal associates under higher atmospheric [CO 2 ] (a[CO 2 ]) than ambient; however, nothing is known about how changes in a[CO 2 ] affect MFRE function in vascular plants. We measured movement of phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) between the lycophyte Lycopodiella...

High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) is increasingly being used for the characterization and monitoring of biodiversity. If applied in a structured way, across broad geographical scales, it offers the potential for a much deeper understanding of global biodiversity through the integration of massive quantities of molecular inventory data generated independently at local, regional and global scales. The universality, reliability an...

Mycorrhizal fungi are critical components of terrestrial habitats and agroecosystems. Recently, Mucoromycotina fine root endophyte fungi (MucFRE) were found to engage in nutritional mutualism with Lycopodiella inundata , which belongs to one of the earliest vascular plant lineages known to associate with MucFRE. The extent to which this mutualism plays a role in resilient plant populations can only be understood by examining i...

Orchid mycorrhizal fungi (OMF) are critical for seed germination and maintaining natural populations of orchids, yet the degree of specificity of most orchids to their mycorrhizal associates remains unknown. Many orchids are at risk of extinction, whether generalists or specialists, but orchid species of narrow fungal specificity are arguably under increased threat due to their requirement for specific fungal symbionts. This s...

An accurate understanding of the diversity and distribution of fungal symbioses in land plants is essential for mycorrhizal research. Here we update the seminal work of Wang and Qiu (Mycorrhiza 16:299-363, 2006) with a long-overdue focus on early-diverging land plant lineages, which were considerably under-represented in their survey, by examining the published literature to compile data on the status of fungal symbioses in li...

Like the majority of land plants, liverworts regularly form intimate symbioses with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycotina). Recent phylogenetic and physiological studies report that they also form intimate symbioses with Mucoromycotina fungi and that some of these, like those involving Glomeromycotina, represent nutritional mutualisms. To compare these symbioses, we carried out a global analysis of Mucoromycotina fungi...

Aim Achlorophyllous mycoheterotrophic plants and mycorrhizal fungi often have highly specific interactions that potentially limit the plants’ distribution and diversification potential. However, specificity in biotic interactions may differ considerably over a species’ distribution range and therefore interactions need to be studied over their entire range to assess their evolution in space and time. The present study investig...

Ectomycorrhizal fungi are major ecological players in temperate forests, but they are rarely used in measures of forest condition because large‐scale, high‐resolution, standardized and replicated belowground data are scarce. We carried out an analysis of ectomycorrhizas at 22 intensively monitored long‐term oak plots, across nine European countries, covering complex natural and anthropogenic environmental gradients. We found t...

Many of the skills and resources associated with botanic gardens and arboreta, including plant taxonomy, horticulture, and seed bank management, are fundamental to ecological restoration efforts, yet few of the world's botanic gardens are involved in the science or practice of restoration. Thus, we examined the potential role of botanic gardens in these emerging fields. We believe a reorientation of certain existing institutio...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 1103–1113 Abstract Global environmental change has serious implications for functional biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests. Trees depend on mycorrhizal fungi for nutrient uptake, but predicted increases in nitrogen availability may alter fungal communities. To address a knowledge gap regarding the effects of nitrogen availability on mycorrhizal communities at large scales, we examine the rel...

Fungus‐subsidized growth through the seedling stage is the most critical feature of the life history for the thousands of mycorrhizal plant species that propagate by means of ‘dust seeds.’ We investigated the extent of specificity towards fungi shown by orchids in the genera Cephalanthera and Epipactis at three stages of their life cycle: (i) initiation of germination, (ii) during seedling development, and (iii) in the mature...