New comprehensive database seeks contributions to ever expanding knowledge of the mycorrhizal colonization of vascular plants
Dr. Nadia Soudzilovskaia
Assistant Professor, Environmental Biology Department, Leiden University
Almost all vascular plants on Earth possess mycorrhiza, a plant-fungal symbiosis that transfers carbon and nutrients between plant roots and fungi. This symbiosis shapes plant and soil biotic communities and drives biogeochemical cycling around the world. The importance of mycorrhizal associations for functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is increasingly recognized. However, there are many more questions that remain to be answered: How do mycorrhizas impact carbon and nutrient flow between plants and soil? Through which mechanisms do mycorrhizas affect functioning of terrestrial ecosystems? How did mycorrhizas evolve and how did they shape plant evolution? Besides, differing in types of mycorrhizal colonization, plants also differ in the intensity of root colonisation by mycorrhizal fungi. This parameter provides insights into the level of closeness of the plant-fungal relation, which is associated with the effectiveness of plant nutrition. Yet, the intriguing questions 1) what is the variation among vascular plant species in the type and intensity of mycorrhizal colonization? and 2) what does this variation mean for terrestrial ecosystems? remain to be answered. Addressing all these questions requires use of correct and exhaustive data about type and intensity of mycorrhizal associations with vascular plant species. However, this information is unknown for the great majority of vascular plants and, when available, was scattered in multiple narrow-focused data sets, most of which cover specific Earth regions or mycorrhizal types.
Georeferenced records from the FungalRoot Database (Soudzilovskaia et al. 2020, Figure 1)
In April 2019 we released a new database called FungalRoot containing data on the type and intensity of mycorrhizal colonization of vascular plants. The database is presented in a new publication (Soudzilovskaia et al. 2020) in the journal New Phytologist, and is available at GBIF and PlutoF platforms. The new database is the largest and most exhaustive compilation of published data on plant mycorrhizal colonization. It contains 36,303 observations for 14,870 plant species, tripling the previously available amount of data about mycorrhizal types of individual plant species, and tenfold increasing previously available data about intensity of mycorrhizal colonization of individual species. In addition, the database contains rich metadata about geographical locations, soil conditions and plants, allowing detailed ecological analyses of the role of mycorrhizal associations in functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. The first examples of such analysis are the two recently published papers examining the global distribution of mycorrhizal plants (Soudzilovskaia et al. 2019) and environmental drivers (Barceló et al. 2019) of this distribution.
While our database covers the wealth of published data about type and intensity of root colonization of mycorrhizal plants, it lacks the data for many Earth plants that have not been yet investigated. Additionally, the correctness of mycorrhizal type assignments of vascular plants remains a hot topic in scientific debates. Therefore, we have shaped our database as an open platform allowing additions of new records and comments about mycorrhizal plant assignments (please see the publication for practical guidelines for contributing to the database.) We kindly invite colleagues working the fascinating topic of mycorrhiza to actively collaborate on further enlarging and the data and making in as accurate as possible.
Publication:
Soudzilovskaia, N.A., Vaessen, S., Barcelo, M., He, J., Rahimlou, S., Abarenkov, K., Brundrett, M.C., Gomes, S.I., Merckx, V. and Tedersoo, L. (2020), FungalRoot: Global online database of plant mycorrhizal associations. New Phytol. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/nph.16569
Database access:
GBIF: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/744edc21-8dd2-474e-8a0b-b8c3d56a3c2d
PlutoF: https://plutof.ut.ee/
