Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 275, Issue 1638, Pages 1029-1035Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1622
Keywords
arbuscular mycorrhizal mutualism; myco-heterotrophy; parasitism; symbiosis
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The ancient arbuscular mycorrhizal association between the vast majority of plants and the fungal phylum Glomeromycota is a dominant nutritional mutualism worldwide. In the mycorrhizal mutualism, plants exchange photosynthesized carbohydrates for mineral nutrients acquired by fungi from the soil. This widespread cooperative arrangement is broken by 'cheater' plant species that lack the ability to photosynthesize and thus become dependent upon three-partite linkages (cheater-fungus-photosynthetic plant). Using the first fine-level coevolutionary analysis of mycorrhizas, we show that extreme fidelity towards fungi has led cheater plants to lengthy evolutionary codiversification. Remarkably, the plants' evolutionary history closely mirrors that of their considerably older mycorrhizal fungi. This demonstrates that one of the most diffuse mutualistic networks is vulnerable to the emergence, persistence and speciation of highly specific cheaters.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available