Assessing Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal community composition and diversity across a land-use gradient in Eastern Washington prairies

Author

Katherine I. Cole, Eastern Washington University

Date of Award

Spring 2025

Rights

Access is available to all users

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS) in Biology

Department

Biology

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are key to healthy, functioning terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Associating with over 80% of all extant land plants, they play a pivotal role in nutrient cycling, and contribute to overall plant health. Given their significance to terrestrial ecosystems, AMF have a crucial role to play in the successful restoration of Eastern Washington’s native prairies. However, AMF community composition is significantly altered by the commercial agricultural practices used extensively in this region for over 100 years. The Eastern Washington University (EWU) Prairie Restoration Project aims to restore ~120 acres of farmland to native prairie. This research provides insight into the diversity of AMF communities in the region, helping to improve restoration efforts. We collected soil samples from a total of 37 sites across four distinct prairie land-use types: remnant native prairies (n=9), Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) (n=10) lands, conventional-till farmland (n=11), and no-till farmland (n=7). AMF DNA extracted from soil samples, was amplified using the AMF-specific primer pair NS31-AML2 and sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform using 300bp paired-end sequencing. Sequences were quality filtered and grouped into amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) using QIIME2. Taxonomy for the recovered AMF lineages was assigned using the MaarjAM database. Our results suggest that the community composition of AMF is significantly different across land-use types (PERMANOVA; p< 0.05). ASV richness and diversity also differ across land-use types with prairie and CRP sites having significantly higher richness and diversity than conventional till sites (ANOVA; p< 0.05), but not no-till sites. Our findings are an important first step towards restoring a native prairie AMF community to the EWU prairie restoration site.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Cole, Katherine I., "Assessing Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal community composition and diversity across a land-use gradient in Eastern Washington prairies" (2025). EWU Masters Thesis Collection. 959.
https://dc.ewu.edu/theses/959