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Epiparasitic plants specialized on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Abstract

Over 400 non-photosynthetic species from 10 families of vascular plants obtain their carbon from fungi and are thus defined as myco-heterotrophs1. Many of these plants are epiparasitic on green plants from which they obtain carbon by ‘cheating’ shared mycorrhizal fungi2,3,4,5,6,7. Epiparasitic plants examined to date depend on ectomycorrhizal fungi for carbon transfer and exhibit exceptional specificity for these fungi3,4,5,6,7, but for most myco-heterotrophs neither the identity of the fungi nor the sources of their carbon are known. Because many myco-heterotrophs grow in forests dominated by plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF; phylum Glomeromycota), we proposed that epiparasitism would occur also between plants linked by AMF. On a global scale AMF form the most widespread mycorrhizae, thus the ability of plants to cheat this symbiosis would be highly significant. We analysed mycorrhizae from three populations of Arachnitis uniflora (Corsiaceae, Monocotyledonae), five Voyria species and one Voyriella species (Gentianaceae, Dicotyledonae), and neighbouring green plants. Here we show that non-photosynthetic plants associate with AMF and can display the characteristic specificity of epiparasites. This suggests that AMF mediate significant inter-plant carbon transfer in nature.

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Figure 1: The AMF of Arachnitis are markedly similar, showing minimal variation in the generally highly polymorphic internal transcribed spacers of nuclear DNA.
Figure 2: Most of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbionts of the three plant genera sampled fall into three distinct clades within Glomus group A.

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Acknowledgements

We thank I. Gamundí for an Arachnitis sample, B. Giménez for help in locating Arachnitis populations, T. Szaro for computer assistance, and T. Boller and D. Hibbett for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Royal Society of London.

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Correspondence to Martin I. Bidartondo.

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Bidartondo, M., Redecker, D., Hijri, I. et al. Epiparasitic plants specialized on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Nature 419, 389–392 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01054

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