Tropical forest type influences community assembly processes in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Aim: Plant community assembly in tropical rainforest has been shown to be largely governed by stochastic processes, but as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi display limited host preference, they may not follow the same stochastic assembly pattern. Here, we determined the relative importance of environmental and spatial drivers responsible for the community assembly process of AM fungi in two types of tropical rainforest (semideciduous rainforest and dense ombrophilous forests).
Location: Atlantic rainforest in northeastern Brazil, South America.
Taxon: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycota).
Methods: We collected root samples from eight protected areas of Atlantic forest along a 700 km transect in northeastern Brazil. We measured the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes by redundancy analysis (RDA) and variation partitioning in comparison with null expectations using ad hoc generated neutral communities. Furthermore, we accessed species associations fr...