The tropical rainforest has interested ecologists for hundreds of years because of its vast species diversity. The distribution and establishment of trees is related to soil properties and rootassociated microorganisms. The coexistence of hyper-diverse plant communities in tropical rainforests has resulted in associations being formed with belowground communities, mycorrhizas (particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM), ectomycorrhizas (ECM)) and root associated bacterial communities. The rapid deforestation in Southeast Asia is causing the loss of the dominant and important tree species belonging to the family Dipterocarpaceae. It is important to understand whether different host species in the same environment maintain mycorrhizal and bacterial diversity, especially mycorrhizas with a restricted host range. In this study, I examine the ecology of mycorrhizas and bacteria associated with Dipterocarpaceae and also the plant community as a whole. The aim of this project is to understand the effect of host properties (e.g. species, size), soil factors (e.g. nutrient concentrations) and spatial factors on mycorrhizal fungi and bacterial diversity and community structure. The research took place in two Centre for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) plots in Malaysia: Pasoh Forest Reserve (in Negeri Sembilan) and Danum Valley Conservation Area (in Sabah). Molecular protocols and a modern technique, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), were adopted to quantify mycorrhizal and bacterial loads in tropical plants. ITS1 and ITS2 regions were used for ECM, 18S rRNA were used for AM, and 16S rRNA were used for bacteria. Mycorrhizas and bacteria present in the roots of Dipterocarpaceae from 60 individual plants belonged to 25 species within 6 genera were traced and sampled in 2015. To my knowledge, this study is the first attempt to study root-associated bacteria across multiple species within a single family, Dipterocarpaceae. Dipterocarpaceae's species was found to significantly influence root bacteria. Analyses showed that mycorrhizal communities are similar on the host, unlike the null model. Dipterocarpaceae was previously believed to solely host ECM, but this study disproves this. This study shows that Dipterocarpaceae can have dual colonization, as it iv can also associate with AM fungi. One soil core of 10 cm × 10 cm × 7.5 cm were collect randomly in three subplot and further divided at 2.5 cm each slice into 75 individual 'microcubes' of 2 cm × 2 cm × 2.5 cm depths enumerates a total of 192 fine root samples. Multivariate analysis revealed that AM fungi tend to associate with non-dipterocarp (as well as unidentified families) while ECM fungi tend to associate with dipterocarps. Data was also collected on host attributes, plant size, and root density. Dipterocarpaceae size does not influence the distribution of mycorrhizal or bacterial communities. The root density reduces as depth increases. Therefore, root density does have a significant influence on mycorrhizal community structure. The diversity of ECM and AM fungal communities within cubes decreased significantly with depth (p < 0.001), whereas the mycorrhizal communities did not change across horizontal distances within cubes. To investigate whether there is a relationship between belowground communities and soil properties, soil macro and micro nutrients were examined and a multivariate analysis was performed. The results showed that communities of belowground (mycorrhizal and bacterial) species correlate with soil parameters. Spatial scale also had an effect on community assembly, independent of environmental variation. These results demonstrate that mycorrhizal fungal communities can vary substantially over very fine spatial scales, and that the distribution of roots from different species do not reflect their proximity aboveground. This study clearly demonstrates the widespread presence of mycorrhizal fungi and root associated bacteria in tropical rainforest plants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:760002 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Mustafa Bakray, Nur Aqilah Binti |
| Contributors | Taylor, Andrew ; Johnson, David ; Burslem, David F. R. P. ; Both, Sabine |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=239153 |
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