Vascular plants are composed of two distinct parts: the aboveground (autotrophic leaves) and the belowground (heterotrophic roots). Both are structured to enable resource capture, but in distinct environments. While the leaves contact with a medium where micro- organisms are scarce, roots contact with a medium where micro- organisms are abundant and therefore evolved to take advantage of them, in particular through arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis. In this chapter we would like to show that the responsiveness of plants to AM symbiosis in slow-growing wild species is dependent on soil AMF communities and their interference with carbon and nitrogen fluxes between the two partners. The results suggest that in low-resource environments, root system physiology adapts to maximise uptake capacity, and root system morphology adapts to maximise active uptake length. These observations demonstrate that mycorrhizal symbioses can be beneficial to plants, especially those in stressful environments, such as those of Mediterranean climates.
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Cruz, C., Correia, P., Ramos, A., Carvalho, L., Bago, A., Loução, M.A.M. (2008). Arbuscular Mycorrhiza in Physiological and Morphological Adaptations of Mediterranean Plants. In: Varma, A. (eds) Mycorrhiza. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78826-3_34
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