Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
Abstract
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat availability in contemporary and historical agricultural landscapes. AM fungal biomass in the soil was quantified using the fatty-acid biomarker 16:1ω5 in phospholipid (PLFA) and neutral lipid (NLFA) fractions. These fractions represent predominantly metabolically active and storage-associated biomass, respectively. Biomass estimates were compared with SSU metabarcoding-derived read count, Shannon diversity, community-weighted niche volume, and culturability. NLFA-based biomass estimates were positively associated with DNA read count and taxon richness but showed weak associations with Shannon diversity, whereas PLFA-based estimates were weakly associated with all three metrics. AM fungal biomass was negatively associated with community-weighted culturability but positively associated with community-weighted niche volume. Neither contemporary nor historical natural habitat availability predicted AM fungal biomass at the spatial scales examined, despite previously identified landscape effects on richness and community composition. Thus, landscape legacies were more evident in AM fungal taxonomic structure than in the amount of fungal biomass maintained in agricultural soils. Our findings demonstrate that biomass, diversity and community ecological characteristics capture distinct dimensions of AM fungal communities and can respond differently to environmental drivers across temporal scales.Integrating lipid-based biomass measurements with molecular assessments of diversity and ecological strategy should therefore provide a more comprehensive basis for evaluating AM fungal community condition and their potential as indicators of soil health in agricultural landscapes.
Related
- Energy Landscape Sampling Reveals Ligand-Dependent Structural Dynamics of the Protease-Activated Receptor 1.
- Comments on "SpatialDG: a novel spatial domain identification method for spatially resolved transcriptomics data based on dual-graph neural network".
- Spatially resolved host and microbiota RNA profiling in the mouse gut using microDBiT
- Decoding Stability and Selectivity in Unnatural DNA Base Pairs with Spatially Separated Recognition Interfaces.
- MechanoMaST - a multimodal pipeline for spatially registering mechanical and transcriptomic tissue data
BibTeX
@misc{wipulasena2026spatially,
title = {{Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context}},
author = {A. Y. Ayesh Piyara Wipulasena and Alar Astover and John Davison and Koit Herodes and Inga Hiiesalu and Kadri Koorem and Siqiao Liu and Oscar Zárate-Martínez and Maarja Öpik and Meelis Pärtel and Siim-Kaarel Sepp and Martti Vasar and Martin Zobel and Tanel Vahter},
howpublished = {EcoEvoRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.32942/x2dm6t},
url = {https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/15416/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Spatially explicit sampling of AM fungal biomass reveals links to community characteristics and landscape context
AU - A. Y. Ayesh Piyara Wipulasena
AU - Alar Astover
AU - John Davison
AU - Koit Herodes
AU - Inga Hiiesalu
AU - Kadri Koorem
AU - Siqiao Liu
AU - Oscar Zárate-Martínez
AU - Maarja Öpik
AU - Meelis Pärtel
AU - Siim-Kaarel Sepp
AU - Martti Vasar
AU - Martin Zobel
AU - Tanel Vahter
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
PB - EcoEvoRxiv
DO - 10.32942/x2dm6t
UR - https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/15416/
AB - Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are important contributors to soil functioning, yet their biomass and diversity may respond differently to environmental characteristics and historical legacies. Understanding these relationships is necessary for evaluating AM fungi as indicators of soil health. We investigated relationships among AM fungal biomass, community properties and natural habitat availability in contemporary and historical agricultural landscapes. AM fungal biomass in the soil was quantified using the fatty-acid biomarker 16:1ω5 in phospholipid (PLFA) and neutral lipid (NLFA) fractions. These fractions represent predominantly metabolically active and storage-associated biomass, respectively. Biomass estimates were compared with SSU metabarcoding-derived read count, Shannon diversity, community-weighted niche volume, and culturability. NLFA-based biomass estimates were positively associated with DNA read count and taxon richness but showed weak associations with Shannon diversity, whereas PLFA-based estimates were weakly associated with all three metrics. AM fungal biomass was negatively associated with community-weighted culturability but positively associated with community-weighted niche volume. Neither contemporary nor historical natural habitat availability predicted AM fungal biomass at the spatial scales examined, despite previously identified landscape effects on richness and community composition. Thus, landscape legacies were more evident in AM fungal taxonomic structure than in the amount of fungal biomass maintained in agricultural soils. Our findings demonstrate that biomass, diversity and community ecological characteristics capture distinct dimensions of AM fungal communities and can respond differently to environmental drivers across temporal scales.Integrating lipid-based biomass measurements with molecular assessments of diversity and ecological strategy should therefore provide a more comprehensive basis for evaluating AM fungal community condition and their potential as indicators of soil health in agricultural landscapes.
ER -