Adam Frew

Western Sydney University · Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE)

An assumption in ecology is that plant identity plays a central role in the assembly of root‐colonising arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities. While numerous correlational studies support this notion, with evidence of host selectivity among fungal taxa and host‐specific responses to different AM fungi, empirical demonstrations of host‐driv...

Temporal variation during the assembly of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities within plant roots have been posited as critical drivers of the plant-fungal symbiotic outcomes. However, functional implications of these dynamics for the host plant remain poorly understood. We conducted a controlled pot experiment with Sorghum bicolor to inv...

Background Deadwood contains a large reservoir of carbon and nutrients in forest ecosystems, its decomposition has considerable effects on forest soil chemistry and biota. Tree functional group and nutrient inputs both have a significant influence on wood decomposition rates. However, little is known about how these factors interactively influence...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi play a key role in terrestrial ecosystems by forming symbiotic relationships with plants and may confer benefits for sustainable agriculture, by reducing reliance on harmful fertiliser and pesticide inputs and enhancing plant resilience against insect herbivores. Despite their ecological importance, critical gaps i...

Motivation: Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are integral to plant nutrient acquisition, carbon cycling, and ecosystem resilience, yet our knowledge of their biogeography is severely limited, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia, despite its landmass and unique ecological characteristics, has been vastly undersampled, leaving a signifi...

Plants have evolved various strategies to cope with adverse climates (abiotic) as well as plant enemies (biotic) and silicon (Si) accumulation can play a vital role for both (1). Most plants are associated with beneficial fungi such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi which can enhance these defences against enemies (2) as well as support Si uptak...

Innovations in plant and soil sciences are revolutionising our approach to sustainability, offering solutions with broad societal impacts. Discoveries in these fields hold great potential for combatting, mitigating and adapting to climate change; enhancing food security; and revitalising urban environments. By harnessing the power of plants and the...

Typified by ancient soils and unique assemblages of flora, Australia provides opportunities to expand our understanding of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Despite their ubiquity, key aspects of Australian AM fungal ecology remain buried due to our limited knowledge of their biogeography and their potential adaptation to Australia's environmental...

Fire has shaped global ecosystems for millennia by directly killing organisms and indirectly altering habitats and resources. All terrestrial ecosystems, including fire-prone ecosystems, rely on soil-inhabiting fungi, where they play vital roles in ecological processes. Yet our understanding of how fire regimes influence soil fungi remains limited...

A major goal in ecology is understanding the factors which determine the diversity and distribution of organisms. The outcome of the symbiotic relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is strongly influenced by soil phosphorus (P) availability. Despite this knowledge, there is still much to uncover about how soil P status ca...

Societal Impact Statement The world faces major changes in rainfall patterns and water availability, posing a significant threat to plant productions systems and food security. The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi associate with most major crops and can support plant nutrient and water uptake. Here, AM fungi were shown to mitigate the negative eff...

Purpose Silicon (Si) accumulation by grasses alleviates diverse biotic and abiotic stresses. Despite this important functional role, we have limited understanding of how root microbial symbionts, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, affect Si uptake and even less about how Si supply and accumulation affect AM fungal colonisation. Our objectiv...

Belowground insect herbivory is an important interaction that can shape ecological communities above- and belowground. A key component of belowground ecosystems are the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi that associate with roots of most terrestrial plants. Despite the shared ecological significance of root herbivores and AM fungi, there is an absen...

There is growing interest in managing arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in agriculture to support plant production. These fungi can support crop growth and nutrient uptake but also affect plant-herbivore interactions. Our knowledge of how native AM fungal diversity and community composition influence these interactions is limited, while our underst...

Most terrestrial plants form associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which are soil-dwelling microbial symbionts that provide plants with soil nutrients, while plants supply the fungi with carbon. The majority of these plants are also subject to herbivory from insects, thus tripartite interactions between insect herbivores, plants, and...

The symbiosis between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, subphylum Glomeromycotina, and terrestrial plants is one of the most widespread and arguably most successful plant symbioses on Earth. This ancient relationship, going back 475 MY (Remy et al., 1994; Redecker & Raab, 2006; Field et al., 2015; Rich et al., 2021) is beneficial for the fungi and...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are ubiquitous symbionts of most terrestrial plants that can augment plant defences against insect herbivores. A clearer understanding of the mechanisms underpinning community-specific effects of AM fungi on plant resistance to herbivores is needed. Here, we report how plant (Triticum aestivum) phenolic-based resis...

The symbiotic association between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and terrestrial plants can enhance plant defences against insect herbivores. Despite advances in our understanding of how AM fungi affect plant tolerance and resistance based defence mechanisms, we contend that the role of fungal diversity in these interactions continues to be larg...

Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2) effects on plants depend on several factors including plant photosynthetic physiology (e.g. C3, C4), soil nutrient availability and plants’ co-evolved soil-dwelling fungal symbionts, namely arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Complicated interactions among these components will determine the outcomes for...

Plants deploy an arsenal of chemical and physical defenses against arthropod herbivores, but it may be most cost efficient to produce these only when attacked. Herbivory activates complex signaling pathways involving several phytohormones, including jasmonic acid (JA), which regulate production of defensive compounds. The Poaceae also have the capa...

Societal Impact Statement As the global population increases, the need to feed more people must be met while simultaneously conserving the long‐term sustainability of our agroecosystems. There is mounting interest and discussion around the application of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) inoculants to enhance crop growth, nutrient uptake, and pes...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are ubiquitous symbionts of most terrestrial plants. These fungi not only provide their host plants with access to nutrients and resources but are known to augment plant defences against insect herbivores. Relatively little is known about the role of AM fungal diversity and community assembly on the expression of p...

As the global population increases, the need to feed more people must be met while simultaneously conserving the long-term sustainability of our agroecosystems. There is mounting interest and discussion around the application of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) inoculants to enhance crop growth, nutrient uptake and pest resistance. However, the...

Aims Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi associate with the majority of terrestrial plants, influencing their growth, nutrient uptake and defence chemistry. Consequently, AM fungi can significantly impact plant-herbivore interactions, yet surprisingly few studies have investigated how AM fungi affect plant responses to root herbivores. This study aim...

There is mounting evidence silicon (Si) can alter plant nutrient dynamics and is an important functional trait in plant defence and plant–insect ecology. Despite this, there remains a paucity in our understanding of how Si‐driven changes in nutritional quality can impact herbivore performance across different plant species. We investigated how Si a...

The symbiotic relationship between terrestrial plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is a key driver of plant nutritional and defence traits influencing insect herbivory. These tripartite interactions have been fundamental to shaping the evolution of land plants and the diversity of insect herbivores. Surprisingly, we have little understandi...

Most plants associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi which can enhance their growth and nutrient uptake. Outcomes of the AM symbiosis can be highly variable, depending on soil fertility, plant functional group (C3, C4) and AM fungal diversity. This study assessed the growth and nutrient (C, N, P) responses of two C3 (Triticum aestivum and H...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are ubiquitous components of the soil biota which live symbiotically with terrestrial plants. Plant-parasitic nematodes are an important group of soil-dwelling invertebrates that inflict considerable damage to crops, representing a serious threat to food security. The effects of the AM symbiosis on plant-parasitic...

Dryland forests, those characterised as having low precipitation and soil nutrients, account for over a quarter of forests globally. Increasing their productivity often relies on irrigation and fertilisation, but the impacts on the wider habitat are largely unknown. Understory invertebrates, in particular, play key roles in forest systems (e.g. nut...

Many studies demonstrate that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (eCO2) can promote root nodulation and biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in legumes such as lucerne (Medicago sativa). But when elevated temperature (eT) conditions are applied in tandem with eCO2, a more realistic scenario for future climate change, the positive effe...

Background: Silicon (Si) is known to have numerous beneficial effects on plants, alleviating diverse forms of abiotic and biotic stress. Research on this topic has accelerated in recent years and revealed multiple effects of Si in a range of plant species. Available information regarding the impact of Si on plant defence, growth and development is...

Aims Studies have shown that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can reduce the performance of typically detrimental root feeding insects, yet the mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different sources of AM inocula on plant resistance to a root feeding insect in two different soils with different silicon (Si) con...

The metalloid element silicon (Si) is taken up by plants, accumulates in plant tissues and is irreversibly deposited as solid phytoliths (SiO2) that increase plant rigidity, toughness, and resistance to pathogens and insect herbivores. Applying soluble Si to plants has been shown to increase plant resistance to numerous abiotic and biotic stresses....

Plant nutritional quality is dependent on soil nutrients and co-evolved soil microbial symbionts. Most plants associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which alter their nutritional quality and silicon (Si) uptake from the soil. High Si concentrations reduce plant nutritional quality and can act as an effective defence both aboveground and...

Ecologists have become increasingly aware that silicon uptake by plants, especially the Poaceae, can have beneficial effects on both plant growth and herbivore defence. The effects of silicon on other plant functional groups, such as nitrogen‐fixing legumes, have been less well studied. Silicon could, however, indirectly promote herbivore performan...

Herbivorous insect pests living in the soil represent a significant challenge to food security given their persistence, the acute damage they cause to plants and the difficulties associated with managing their populations. Ecological research effort into rhizosphere interactions has increased dramatically in the last decade and we are beginning to...

Predicted increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 may alter the susceptibility of many plants to insect herbivores due to changes in plant nutrition and defences. Silicon plays a critical role in plant defence against herbivores, so increasing such silicon‐based defences in plants may help remediate situations where plants become more susce...

Phenolic compounds play a role in plant defense against herbivores. For some herbivorous insects, particularly root herbivores, host plants with high phenolic concentrations promote insect performance and tissue consumption. This positive relationship between some insects and phenolics, however, could reflect a negative correlation with other plant...

Many scarab beetles spend the majority of their lives belowground as larvae, feeding on grass roots. Many of these larvae are significant pests, causing damage to crops and grasslands. Damage by larvae of the greyback cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum), for example, can cause financial losses of up to AU$40 million annually to the Australian suga...

Eucalypt management practices can affect the population dynamics of defoliating insects. To date, research has focused on how these practices alter eucalypt physiology and chemistry, which in turn affect canopy herbivores. Management practices such as irrigation and fertilisation, however, could also shape the understory plant community and potenti...