Strengthening mycorrhizal research in South America.

Abstract

South America is a vast region of exceptional biodiversity that, in over 60° of latitude, encompasses an extraordinary range of ecosystems and ecological gradients. From the World’s driest climate in the Atacama Desert, to one of the wettest in the Choc o biogeographic region; and from theWorld’s largest drainage basin, the Amazon, to the World’s longest mountain range, the Andes. Despite this impressive range of ecological conditions that can be seen as natural laboratories, many groups of organisms are not well studied in South America. Soil microorganisms are particularly under-studied (Cameron et al., 2019), especially mycorrhizal fungi (Bueno et al., 2017a; Mar ın & Bueno, 2019), which are crucial for many ecosystem services, as nutrient cycling and food production (van der Heijden et al., 2015). These knowledge gaps have limited the ability of scientists to address ecological and evolutionary questions related to the distribution and role of mycorrhizal fungi in the face of current environmental changes. The overall limitations for the development of such biodiversity studies in South America lie in an historic shortage of connections between the human and technical research resources (Mar ın & Bueno, 2019). In this context, ecological research networks are increasingly used tools to overcome these and related constraints (Richter et al., 2018). The South American Mycorrhizal Research Network (SAMRN; https://southmycor rhizas.org/) was established in 2017 (Bueno et al., 2017a; Godoy et al., 2017) as an horizontal and cooperative effort integrating researchers from the five continents (Fig. 1), which aims to assess the continent’s mycorrhizal biodiversity and its role in reducing the impact of current environmental changes. In its short existence, SAMRN has reinforced scientific interactions between researchers, stakeholders, and students from the continent. The cooperative effort of our members has also resulted in the first book centered on mycorrhizal fungi in South America (Pagano & Lugo, 2019). As a further step, the ‘II International Symposium of Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in South America’, organized by Universidad Nacional del Comahue, took place in Bariloche, Argentina, held on 6–8 March 2019, gathering c. 90 participants from 16 countries. The Symposium focused on the developments and opportunities for mycorrhizal research in South America, hosting several debates, which helped to identify themost critical research questions, along with a first round of potential future directions (Table 1). Several themes emerged at this meeting that traversed the ecological levels of organization (Fig. 2), with a strong focus on the diversity of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi, and the potential application of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in agricultural and sustainability/conservation contexts.