A model that explains diversity patterns of arbuscular mycorrhizas
Stavros D. Veresoglou and
John M. Halley
Ecological Modelling, 2012, vol. 231, issue C, 146-152
Abstract:
Worldwide arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) plants in grassland ecosystems associate with multiple AM symbionts; the literature suggests that the typical range varies from 7 to 11 AM symbionts. Using a model based on group selection, we examine the evolutionary traits that could be responsible for maintaining this situation. We assumed that from a pool of 160 potential symbionts some of them would deliver a profit for the plant while the others (“defectors”) would deliver comparable damage. The plant could control the number of simultaneous fungi it associated with but not their identities. Plants admitting higher numbers of symbionts can gain greater benefits but run a greater risk of associating with defectors. Based on simulation results we can demonstrate convergence toward an optimal number of fungal symbionts which occurs faster for plants that experience low survivorship and higher selection pressure. Additionally, for seedling survivorship rates close to those experienced in grassland biomes (i.e. around 50%) there appears to be a steady plateau with an optimum of 7 symbionts over a wide range of defection probabilities. This does not hold for other biomes with higher plant mortality such as woodlands in which there is an unsteady situation with highly likely modification of the number of simultaneous symbionts. This may hold important clues about to the origin of the ectomycorrhizal associations where only one symbiont is optimum.
Keywords: Arbuscular mycorrhizal diversity; Complementarity; Theoretical ecology; Grasslands; Biological markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380012000555
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:231:y:2012:i:c:p:146-152
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.01.026
Access Statistics for this article
Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath
More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().