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Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2017

Plant and insect genetic variation mediate the impact of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on a natural plant-herbivore interaction

Rasmussen, Pil U.; Amin, Tarique; Bennett, Alison E.; Karlsson Green, Kristina; Timonen, Sari; Van Nouhuys, Saskya; Tack, Ayco J. M.

Abstract

1. While both arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and plant and insect genotype are well known to influence plant and herbivore growth and performance, information is lacking on how these factors jointly influence the relationship between plants and their natural herbivores. 2. The aim of the present study was to investigate how a natural community of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi affects the growth of the perennial herb Plantago lanceolata L. (Plantaginaceae), as well as its interaction with the Glanville fritillary butterfly [Melitaea cinxia L. (Nymphalidae)]. For this, a multifactorial experiment was conducted using plant lines originating from multiple plant populations in the angstrom land Islands, Finland, grown either with or without mycorrhizal fungi. For a subset of plant lines, the impact of mycorrhizal inoculation, plant line, and larval family on the performance of M. cinxia larvae were tested. 3. Arbuscular mycorrhizal inoculation did not have a consistently positive or negative impact on plant growth or herbivore performance. Instead, plant genetic variation mediated the impact of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on plant growth, and both plant genetic variation and herbivore genetic variation mediated the response of the herbivore. For both the plant and insect, the impact of the arbuscular mycorrhizal community ranged from mutualistic to antagonistic. Overall, the present findings illustrate that genetic variation in response to mycorrhizal fungi may play a key role in the ecology and evolution of plant-insect interactions.

Keywords

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; genetic variation; Glomeromycota; Melitaea cinxia; multitrophic interaction; Plantago lanceolata; plant-herbivore interaction

Published in

Ecological Entomology
2017, Volume: 42, number: 6, pages: 793-802

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Evolutionary Biology
    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/een.12453

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/83695