Study on communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in Japanese forests

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K07770
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Forest science
• Research Institution: Chiba University
• Principal Investigator: Yamato Masahide 千葉大学, 教育学部, 教授 (00571788)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 谷口 武士 鳥取大学, 乾燥地研究センター, 准教授 (10524275) ; 折原 貴道 神奈川県立生命の星・地球博物館, 学芸部, 学芸員 (30614945)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: アーバスキュラー菌根 / グロムス菌亜門 / グロムス科 / 森林生態系 / ヒノキ林 / リボソームRNA遺伝子 / Bray-Curtis指数

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We investigated arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities in secondary forests and/or Chamaecyparis obtusa plantations at eight study sites in Japan’s temperate region. The AM fungal communities were evaluated based on compositions of the AM fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs), which were clustered at a 97% similarity threshold of the sequences of a partial SSU rDNA obtained from the plant roots. Interestingly, only 19 OTUs remained after selecting for those that had more than 1.0% of the total reads, and these 19 OTUs accounted for 86.3% of the total reads. Furthermore, three dominant OTUs constituted 48.0% of the total reads. These results indicate that AM fungal communities are primarily constituted by limited AM fungal taxa in the forest ecosystems in Japan's temperate region. The searches against MaarjAM, a database of AM fungal sequences, also revealed that the AM fungi corresponding to the three dominant OTUs are distributed in forest ecosystems on a worldwide scale.

Free Research Field

菌類生態学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

多様な植物によって構成される森林生態系が限定されたAM菌群によって主に構成されていることを示唆する本研究の成果は、多様な菌根菌がみられる外生菌根菌群集とは対照的であり、学術的に興味深い知見が得られた。今後、これらのAM菌を分離培養することができれば、広く林木育種や苗木の生産などに適用できるものと期待され、実用的意義も大きい成果が得られた。