Skip Navigation



AOBPreview published online on September 18, 2009
Annals of Botany, doi:10.1093/aob/mcp235
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
104/7/1255    most recent
mcp235v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Merckx, V.
Right arrow Articles by Hynson, N. A.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Merckx, V.
Right arrow Articles by Hynson, N. A.
Agricola
Right arrow Articles by Merckx, V.
Right arrow Articles by Hynson, N. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Botanical Briefing

Myco-heterotrophy: when fungi host plants

Vincent Merckx1,3,*, Martin I. Bidartondo4 and Nicole A. Hynson2

1 Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
2 Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
3 Laboratory of Plant Systematics, K.U. Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 31, PO Box 2437, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
4 Imperial College London and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew TW9 3DS, UK

* For correspondence. E-mail merckx{at}nature.berkeley.edu

Received: 10 April 2009    Returned for revision: 8 July 2009    Accepted: 18 August 2009   

Background: Myco-heterotrophic plants are partly or entirely non-photosynthetic plants that obtain energy and nutrients from fungi. These plants form a symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal, ectomycorrhizal or saprotrophic fungi to meet their nutrient demands.

Scope: This Botanical Briefing summarizes current knowledge about myco-heterotrophy, discusses its controversial aspects and highlights future directions for research.

Conclusions: Considerable recent progress has been made in terms of understanding the evolutionary history, germination and nutrition of myco-heterotrophic plants. Myco-heterotrophic plants: (1) are diverse and often ancient lineages that have coevolved with fungi, (2) often demonstrate unusually high specificity towards fungi during germination and maturity, and (3) can either cheat common mycorrhizal networks supported by neighbouring photosynthetic plants to satisfy all or part of their energetic and nutritional needs, or recruit free-living saprotrophic fungi into novel mycorrhizal symbioses. However, several fundamental aspects of myco-heterotrophy remain controversial or unknown, such as symbiotic costs and physiology.

Key words: Cheater, common mycorrhizal network, mutualism, myco-heterotrophy, non-photosynthetic, symbiosis


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.