ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Ecophysiology
This article is part of the Research TopicUnderstanding Dryland Ecosystems Through the Lens of Plant Physiological EcologyView all articles
Effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on physiological traits and growth of three woody species from a tropical dry forest
Provisionally accepted
- 1Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal (IMBIV), Córdoba, Argentina
- 2Universidad Central de Venezuela Instituto de Biologia Experimental, Caracas, Venezuela
- 3The University of Utah School of Biological Sciences, Salt Lake City, United States
- 4Universidad Tecnica Luis Vargas Torres de Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Ecuador
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The tropical dry forests (TDFs) of the Macanao Peninsula (Margarita Island, Venezuela) have been severely degraded by open-cast sand mining for over four decades, reducing vegetation cover and disrupting soil biological processes, including those mediated by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). We evaluated the effects of enriching native AMF communities on the physiological performance and growth of three woody species (Bulnesia arborea, Caesalpinia mollis and Piptadenia flava) from a TDF. Seedlings were grown for eight months under greenhouse conditions in two treatments: non-inoculated (NI) and inoculated with a mixed native AMF inoculum (I). Both treatments used the same non-sterile forest soil, ensuring that the inoculated treatment represented an enrichment of the native AMF community, an approach aligned with realistic restoration scenarios. Species differed markedly in their responses to inoculation. In B. arborea, AMF enrichment increased net photosynthetic rate and stomatal conductance by 50 % and 31 %, respectively, and significantly enhanced the maximum rate of RuBisCO carboxylation and biomass accumulation. In C. mollis, inoculated plants exhibited a significant increase in CO2-saturated photosynthetic rate but no growth response. In contrast, P. flava showed greater shoot biomass and root length under inoculation despite no detectable changes in photosynthetic parameters. These species-specific responses suggest that B. arborea may hold potential for future restoration testing in the Macanao Peninsula, and further ecological evaluation is needed before selecting species for restoration.
Keywords: gas exchange, Chlorophyll Fluorescence, Fungal inoculation, Photosynthesis, restoration
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cáceres-Mago, Cáceres, Ávila-Lovera and Tezara. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Karla Cáceres-Mago
Wilmer Tezara
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