Black Jack Battlefield & Nature Park Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Inoculation Study, Wellsville, KS, 2021-2022

Black Jack Battlefield & Nature Park (Wellsville, Kansas, USA) has a rich history of Indigenous stewardship, civil war conflict, agriculture, and, most recently, a decades-old ecological restoration of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. To potentially aid this recovery, we tested the impact of inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi cultured from regional remnant prairies on the survival and growth of 12 native prairie plant species. We grew these plants for a few weeks in the greenhouse with either sterile or AM fungi-inoculated soil. We then planted these into 24 experimental blocks with a 1x1 m field plot for each treatment (48 plots total) containing all 12 plant species when possible. We then tracked the survival and growth of the plants two weeks, about five months, and about fifteen months after planting. Growth was measured as height at all timepoints, and leaf number was included for most species in the latest timepoint. We found impacts of inoculation and species identity on both the survival and growth of the plants.

美国堪萨斯州韦尔斯维尔市的黑杰克战场与自然公园（Black Jack Battlefield & Nature Park）拥有深厚的历史底蕴：此地曾开展原住民土地管护、内战战事与农业开发，近年更实施了长达数十年的高草草原生态系统修复工程。为助力该修复工作，我们测试了从区域残存草原分离培养的丛枝菌根（arbuscular mycorrhizal，AM）真菌接种剂对12种本土草原植物存活与生长的影响。我们将受试植物分别种植于无菌土壤与接种AM真菌的土壤中，在温室培育数周。随后将其移栽至24个实验区组，每个处理对应1块1×1米的样地（总计48块样地），样地内尽可能包含全部12种受试植物。随后我们分别于移栽后2周、约5个月及约15个月时，监测记录植物的存活状况与生长情况：各时间点均以株高作为生长量测定指标，末次采样时还统计了多数物种的叶片数量。研究结果表明，真菌接种与植物物种身份均对植物存活与生长产生显著影响。