A primary survey of the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on Xinglong Mountain, Gansu Province

In this study, Illumina HiSeq molecular sequencing technology was used to examine the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and their distribution characteristics at different altitudes in the Xinglong Mountain Nature Reserve (East Mountain), Gansu Province. A total of 52 species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi belonging to four orders, eight families, and 13 genera were obtained from soil samples. Among these, species of Glomus and Archaeospora were predominant, being represented by 20 and 9 species, respectively, and accounting for 55.77% of the total species. Results obtained for the distribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi at different altitudes revealed that the dominant genera Glomus and Paraglomus were regularly distributed with changes in altitude, whereas the remaining genera were uniformly distributed at different altitudes. Gigaspora margarita, Acaulospora mellea, Glomus albidum, Glomus sp. 1, Glomus sp. 4, and Sclerocystis sinuosa appeared only at certain elevation levels, and are assumed to be restricted to different elevations. Analysis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal species richness indicated that from low altitude to high altitudes, the ACE and Chao1 indices generally had a “single peak” change curve, and showed significant differences at certain altitudes (P < 0.05). Spearman correlation analysis indicated that the distribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in this region is less affected by the altitude factor, and that there were no significant correlations between altitudes. In summary, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi resources on the East Xinglong Mountain are rich and have considerable application potential.