Anthropogenic land use changes diversity and structure of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities at 100-m scale in northeast China

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play a key role in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Anthropogenic land uses have a great impact on ecosystem processes and services. In this study, we estimated the diversity and composition of the AMF communities of five land use types, namely corn field, woodland, grassland, wetland and paddy field, in a new established campus of northeast China by MiSeq sequencing. Our results showed that the numbers of families and genera taxa in the dry lands (corn field, woodland and grassland) were more than in the water lands (wetland and paddy field). Paraglomus, Glomus and Claroideoglomus were the dominant genera in the five land use types. Grassland and woodland had higher AMF diversity compared with arable land and wetland. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination and permutational multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant difference in the AMF community composition among land use types. Canonical correspondence analysis indicated that the structural composition of the AMF communities was affected by soil pH, organic C, N and invertase activity. It was concluded that anthropogenic land uses altered AMF community composition, and returning arable land to woodland and grassland increased the diversity of AMF communities at 100-m scale in urban ecosystem.

Automated summary

The study revealed that dry lands had higher AMF diversity compared to water lands, and grassland and woodland had higher AMF diversity than arable land and wetland. The composition of AMF communities varied significantly among different land use types, and was influenced by soil properties.