‘There must be something in the soil our little plants need’: exploring patterns of potential mycorrhizal associations in the flora of the Sunshine Coast heathlands, Queensland, Australia

Hilary Pearl; Alison Shapcott

doi:10.1071/BT23057

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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‘There must be something in the soil our little plants need’: exploring patterns of potential mycorrhizal associations in the flora of the Sunshine Coast heathlands, Queensland, Australia

Hilary Pearl

^A ^* and Alison Shapcott

^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A School of Science, Technology and Engineering, and Centre for Bioinnovation, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Qld 4556, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: hilarypearl1@gmail.com, ashapcot@usc.edu.au

Handling Editor: Sarah Luxton

Australian Journal of Botany 72, BT23057 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT23057

Submitted: 20 July 2023 Accepted: 30 August 2024 Published: 17 September 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

The first general overview of mycorrhizal functional groups associated with the flora of the Queensland Sunshine Coast heathlands, a community of low phylogenetic diversity, is provided in this Short Communication. Broad proportions of plant species associated with mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal functional groups in the heathlands were compared with those in the surrounding rainforest flora, and across the heath strata. This overview suggests that a greater diversity of mycorrhizal strategies and an increased number of plant genera with non-mycorrhizal associations are found in the heathlands, with proportions varying among the strata. These associations may be facilitating the coexistence of plant species and increasing phylogenetic dispersion.

Keywords: community assembly, diversity, facilitation, heathlands, mycorrhiza, phylogenetic dispersion, phylogenetic diversity, Queensland.

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