Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration
Outreach
Soil can be medicine for plants
Small review paper in child-friendly language about the relevance of soil biodiversity and the potential of mycorrhizal fungi to help in ecosystem restoration like a medicine (Fig. 1). The paper is a co-production by Nadja Maaroufi (Bern University (CH), SLU Uppsala (SE)) and Lena Neuenkamp and part of the collection “soil biodiversity” of the Frontiers Young Minds journal. A recipe for self-made fungal fertilizer is included!
Link to the paper (open access, German and English version available): https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.557383
What are ecosystem functions and why are they important – let´s play!
We developed a card game about the importance of ecosystem multifunctionality for the Mediterranean Researchers Night at Alicante University (2022) (see Figure 2 for the rules).
Who can make the ecosystem complete the fastest? Hurry up, but be careful, only a complete ecosystem with all six functions present is stable enough to withstand a catastrophe like flooding, overgrazing, drought or pollution!
Illustrations by artist Silke Kleine Kalvelage (https://silkekleinekalvelage.wordpress.com/ueber-mich/)
How to shed light into the hidden interactions of plant roots and soil fungi?
A behind the scenes interview by Guillermo Bueno from the digital journal club of the South American Mycorrhizal Research Network with Lena Neuenkamp discussing how shade, light availability, and light demand by plants affects arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in roots and in soil, based on her Ecology Letters publication (see links below).
That sound a bit Chinese? Probably if you are not working with mycorrhizal fungi every day.
So here a brief background of the study: Mycorrhizal fungi help plants taking up nutrients from the soil. But, it´s a reciprocal friendship and these fungi demand carbon as price for assisting in nutrient uptake. As we cannot see these fungi – they are smaller than microscopic, we need to use their community patterns in soil and roots along environmental gradients as a backdoor to understand plant-fungal interactions and their outcomes. And one factor obviously shaping the carbon price for the plant is light – only in good light conditions, carbon is easy to photosynthesize from CO2. So, shade should be less helpful for maintaining your fungal friendship as a plant. But, what is if you’re are a shade-adapted plant and actually you photosynthesize best under less light availability? We tested that in a transplant experiment in the field growing shade avoidant and tolerant grassland plants in light and shade, and found that indeed beyond the light availability, also plant shade adaptation could shape which fungi were let into the roots for trading carbon and nutrients. A pretty complex but cool trick to make the interaction between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi in the soil visible. Curious? Watch the interview or read the publication:
Neuenkamp, L., Zobel, M., Koorem, K., Jairus, T., Davison, J., Öpik, M., Vasar, M. and Moora, M. (2021), Light availability and light demand of plants shape the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities in their roots. Ecology Letters, 24: 426-437. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13656
Stay tuned for more!