Fungal phylogenetic diversity drives plant facilitation

Plant–plant facilitation is a crucial ecological process, as many plant species (facilitated) require the presence of an established individual (nurse) to recruit. Some plant facilitative interactions disappear during the ontogenetic development of the facilitated plant but others persist, even when the two plants are adults. We test whether the persistence of plant facilitative interactions is explained by the phylogenetic diversity of mutualistic and non-mutualistic fungi that the nurse and the facilitated species add to the shared rhizosphere. We classify plant facilitative interactions as persistent and non-persistent interactions and quantify the phylogenetic diversity of mutualistic and non-mutualistic fungi added by the plant species to the shared rhizosphere. Our results show that the facilitated species add less phylogenetic diversity of non-mutualistic fungi when plant facilitative interactions persist than when they do not persist. However, persistent and non-persistent facilitative interactions did not differ in the phylogenetic diversity of mutualistic fungi added by the facilitated species to the shared rhizosphere. Finally, the fungal phylogenetic diversity added by the nurse to the shared rhizosphere did not differ between persistent and non-persistent interactions. This study suggests that considering the fungal associates of the plant species involved in facilitative interactions can shed light on the mechanisms of persistence for plant–plant interactions.
This work was funded by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (projects A017475/08, A023461/09), the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (projects IN-202811-3; 213414-3), the Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnología para el Desarrollo (Acción 409AC0369) and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (CGL2014-58333-P). A. M. N. was supported by a postdoctoral contract from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FPDI-2013-16266) and an Early Career Project Grant from the British Ecological Society (3975–4849) and J. G. S.-M. by a Ramón y Cajal postdoctoral contract from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.