Felipe Albornoz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Background and aims Tree dieback is increasing worldwide, threatening the biodiversity and functioning of many terrestrial ecosystems. Tree dieback is associated with multiple interconnected changes in community composition and ecosystem processes. These changes affect plant, fauna and soil microbial communities, and soil physical and chemical proc...

Newly emerging market mechanisms hold significant potential to accelerate investment in restoring biodiversity, but data and tools to account for biodiversity gains constrain their implementation. To address this challenge, we quantified habitat characteristics and plant biodiversity of 56 agroforestry and revegetation plantings in Tasmanian agricu...

Background Arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM) are the most widespread terrestrial symbiosis and are both a key determinant of plant health and a major contributor to ecosystem processes through their role in biogeochemical cycling. Until recently, it was assumed that the fungi which form AM comprise the subphylum Glomeromycotina (G-AMF), and our understan...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) facilitate ecosystem functioning through provision of plant hosts with phosphorus (P), especially where soil P is limiting. Changes in soil nutrient regimes are expected to impact AMF, but the direction of the impact may depend on context. We predicted that nitrogen (N)‐only enrichment promotes plant invasions and...

How the multiple facets of soil fungal diversity vary worldwide remains virtually unknown, hindering the management of this essential species-rich group. By sequencing high-resolution DNA markers in over 4000 topsoil samples from natural and human-altered ecosystems across all continents, we illustrate the distributions and drivers of different lev...

How the multiple facets of soil fungal diversity vary worldwide remains virtually unknown, hindering the management of this essential species-rich group. By sequencing high-resolution DNA markers in over 4000 topsoil samples from natural and human-altered ecosystems across all continents, we illustrate the distributions and drivers of different lev...

Background Arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM) are the most widespread terrestrial symbiosis and are both a key determinant of plant health and a major contributor to ecosystem processes through their role in biogeochemical cycling. Until recently, it was assumed that the fungi which form AM comprise the subphylum Glomeromycotina (G-AMF), and our understan...

Images of roots colonised by M-AMF and G-AMF

Current literature suggests ecological niche differentiation between co-occurring Mucoromycotinian arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (M-AMF) and Glomeromycotinian AMF (G-AMF), but experimental evidence is limited. We investigated the influence of soil age, water availability (wet and dry), and plant species (native Microlaena stipoides and exotic Trifol...

Purpose Degraded ecosystems can be maintained by abiotic and biotic legacies long after initial disturbances, preventing recovery. These legacies can include changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). To inform potential restoration pathways, we aimed to elucidate differences in AMF between intact and degraded ecosystems, their responses to mod...

Fungi are highly diverse organisms, which provide multiple ecosystem services. However, compared with charismatic animals and plants, the distribution patterns and conservation needs of fungi have been little explored. Here, we examined endemicity patterns, global change vulnerability and conservation priority areas for functional groups of soil fu...

Background Soils harbour a remarkable diversity of interacting fungi, bacteria, and other microbes: together these perform a wide variety of ecological roles from nutrient cycling and organic matter breakdown, to pathogenic and symbiotic interactions with plants. Many studies demonstrate the role of microbes in plant-soil feedbacks and their intera...

Oomycetes are a group of eukaryotes related to brown algae and diatoms, many of which cause plant and animal diseases. Improved methods are needed for rapid and accurate characterization of oomycete communities using DNA metabarcoding. We have identified the mitochondrial 40S ribosomal protein S10 gene (rps10) as a locus for oomycete metabarcoding...

Fungi play pivotal roles in ecosystem functioning, but little is known about their global patterns of diversity, endemicity, vulnerability to global change drivers and conservation priority areas. We applied the high-resolution PacBio sequencing technique to identify fungi based on a long DNA marker that revealed a high proportion of hitherto unkno...

Fungi are highly important biotic components of terrestrial ecosystems, but we still have a very limited understanding about their diversity and distribution. This data article releases a global soil fungal dataset of the Global Soil Mycobiome consortium (GSMc) to boost further research in fungal diversity, biogeography and macroecology. The datase...

Globally, agricultural land‐use negatively affects soil biota that contribute to ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling, yet arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are promoted as essential components of agroecosystems. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi include Glomeromycotinian AMF (G‐AMF) and the arbuscule‐producing fine root endophytes, recently re...

Oomycetes are a group of eukaryotes related to brown algae and diatoms, many of which cause diseases in plants and animals. Improved methods are needed for rapid and accurate characterization of oomycete communities using DNA metabarcoding. We have identified the mitochondrial 40S ribosomal protein S10 gene ( rps10 ) as a locus useful for oomycete...

Highly diverse plant communities growing on nutrient‐impoverished soils are test beds for theories on species coexistence. Here, neighbouring mycorrhizal and non‐mycorrhizal plants compete for limited phosphorus. The impact of below‐ground interactions on community dynamics is underexplored. We used an experimental approach to investigate effects o...

Fine root endophytes (FRE) were traditionally considered a morphotype of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), but recent genetic studies demonstrate that FRE belong within the subphylum Mucoromycotina, rather than in the subphylum Glomeromycotina with the AMF. These findings prompt enquiry into the fundamental ecology of FRE and AMF. We sampled FRE...

Aims Contrasting nutrient-acquisition strategies would explain why species differ in their distribution in relation to soil phosphorus (P) availability, promoting diversity. However, what drives the differential distribution of plant species with the same P-acquisition strategy remains poorly understood. Methods We selected two Haemodoraceae speci...

Soil. Ecol. Lett., Just Accepted Manuscript • http://dx. Abstract Since the discovery of mycorrhizas, dogmas have been developed regarding their function, ecology, and distribution. We explore if these dogmas are valid, and if there are research biases toward regions inhabited by most researchers and away from regions inhabited by most plant specie...

Aims Arbuscule-producing fine root endophytes (FRE) (previously incorrectly Glomus tenue) were recently placed within subphylum Mucoromycotina; the first report of arbuscules outside subphylum Glomeromycotina. Here, we aimed to estimate nutrient concentrations in plant and fungal structures of FRE and to test the utility of cryo-scanning electron m...

Abiotic and biotic drivers of co-occurring fungal functional guilds across regional-scale environmental gradients remain poorly understood. We characterized fungal communities using Illumina sequencing from soil cores collected across three Neotropical rainforests in Panama that vary in soil properties and plant community composition. We classified...

Aims Banksia attenuata is a resprouting species growing in deep sand, while B. sessilis is a fire-killed species occurring in shallow sand over laterite or limestone. We aimed to discover the ecophysiological basis for their different distributions by exploring their investment in deep non-cluster roots and shallow cluster roots, and their cluster-...

Background Mycorrhizal strategies are very effective in enhancing plant acquisition of poorly-mobile nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P) from infertile soil. However, on very old and severely P-impoverished soils, a carboxylate-releasing and P-mobilising cluster-root strategy is more effective at acquiring this growth-limiting resource. Carboxyl...

Fungi play critical roles in ecosystem processes and interact with plant communities in mutualistic, pathogenic, and commensal ways. Fungal communities are thought to depend on both associated tree communities and soil properties. However, the relative importance of the biotic and abiotic drivers of soil fungal community structure and diversity in...

The abundance of nitrogen (N)‐fixing plants in ecosystems where phosphorus (P) limits plant productivity poses a paradox because N fixation entails a high P cost. One explanation for this paradox is that the N‐fixing strategy allows greater root phosphatase activity to enhance P acquisition from organic sources, but evidence to support this content...

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal communities co-vary with host plant communities along soil fertility gradients, yet it is unclear whether this reflects changes in host composition, fungal edaphic specialisation, or priority effects during fungal community establishment. We grew two co-occurring ECM plant species (to control for host identity) in soils...

Soilborne pathogens can contribute to the maintenance of local plant diversity by reducing differences in competitive ability between co‐occurring plant species. It has been hypothesized that efficient phosphorus (P) acquisition by plants in P‐impoverished ecosystems might trade off against resistance to root pathogens. This could help explain high...

Table S1. Comparison of mycorrhizal root colonization between fresh and rehydrated roots. Values shown as mean ± SE based on paired t‐test

Table S3. Data file used in this study with plant biomass, N and P concentration, AM and ECM root colonization, and nodule biomass.

Table S2. Summary of statistical outputs. Values shown are degrees of freedom (DF), F‐test and p‐value of individual mixed‐effect models of two factors (Stage and Species), and their interaction for each variable.

Changes in soil nutrient availability during long-term ecosystem development influence the relative abundances of plant species with different nutrient-acquisition strategies. These changes in strategies are observed at the community level, but whether they also occur within individual species remains unknown. Plant species forming multiple root sy...

Nitrogen and phosphorus are the main elements limiting net primary production in terrestrial ecosystems. When growing in nutrient-poor soils, plants develop physiological mechanisms to conserve nutrients, such as reabsorbing elements from senescing foliage (i.e. nutrient retranslocation). We investigated the changes in soil N and P in post-fire suc...

Nucleation is a successional process in which extant vegetation facilitates seed dispersal and recruitment of other individuals and species around focal points in the landscape, leading to ecosystem recovery. This is an important process in disturbed sites where regeneration is limited by abiotic conditions or restrictive seed dispersal. We investi...

Background/Question/Methods Nucleated regeneration is a specific model of succession whereby colonising or remnant plants, occurring in discrete patches, facilitate the establishment of other species by providing suitable microsites for seed accumulation, germination, and subsequent growth of seedlings. The combination of the perch effect and fac...