Revealing the compositional and functional responses of mycorrhizal fungi to rewilding at the Knepp WildlandCase study
Using novel eDNA methods to understand if rewilding is also serving below-ground communities, focusing on ‘keystone’ mycorrhizal communities and their functions.
Rewilding is a nature recovery approach that prioritises functionalism and ecosystem autonomy, using low-impact interventions that aim to create resilience and self-regulation. However, whilst rewilding has seen many successes above-ground, little attention has been paid to those communities below. This project responds to the call to improve our knowledge on the responses of below-ground taxonomies generally by studying mycorrhizal communities at the Knepp Wildland, a large ~3500acre ex-farmland site in West Sussex, UK. This site provides unique opportunities to study one of our longest, largest, and more mature rewilding projects and the dynamic environment created by its reintroduced disturbance actors.
Mycorrhizal fungi build symbiotic relationships with plant roots, exchanging nutrients that usually helps bolster survival for both fungi and plant. Mycorrhizal fungi send out long, thin strands of hyphae that explore the local soil environment and forage for resources, extending the reach of the roots far beyond the traditional rhizosphere. These strands come together to form mycelium, which can fuse with those extending from other plants to create extensive common mycorrhizal networks. These networks help seeds germinate (with some completely dependent on them!), aid plants in their growth and survival, and have been reported to translocate resources and nutrients around the soil system. These characteristics make this a ‘keystone’ below-ground organism, making their study imperative as they could be an important ingredient to catalysing UK nature recovery.
Utilising novel technologies, this project uses soil eDNA to resolve changes to both mycorrhizal community composition and function to see if rewilding is serving the below-ground ecosystem as it is above. A space-for-time comparison to a local conventional farm is used to track change from the initial land-use to the outcomes seen ~20 years later. It is hoped that as these new technologies become cheaper and more widespread, frameworks such as this can be more routinely applied to nature recovery monitoring, normalising the inclusion and consideration of soil biodiversity in these initiatives.
We have large eDNA datasets for both fungi and bacteria and would be open for collaboration.
