Glomeromycota in Mexico, a country with very high richness

Martin Hassan Polo-Marcial, Luis A. Lara-Pérez, Bruno Tomio Goto, Xochitl Margarito-Vista & Antonio Andrade-Torres

Sydowia 74: 33-63

Published online on June 21st, 2021

The biogeographical species list based on data compilation represent a powerful tool to understand fungal diversity distribution. After five decades of extensive studies on arbuscular mycorrhizal (Glomeromycota) diversity we compiled a checklist with 160 species recorded in Mexico based in 95 publications. The richness found represents 49 % of species, distributed in 34 genera, 13 families and five orders in Glomeromycota. The genera Acaulospora and Glomus were dominant, with 27 and 26 species, respectively. The most represented spore development type was ectocarpic species (72 %) followed by glomerocarpic (28 %). The vegetation type with the highest species richness was agroecosystems (135 spp.), followed by xerophytic shrublands (74 species). Low number of species were recorded in aquatic and underwater vegetation (38 spp.) and coastal sand dunes (28 spp.). The Jaccard similarity index varied from 0.32 to 0.66, indicating a low to medium level of overlapping in AMF species between vegetation types in Mexico. More effort should be carried out on ecological and morphological studies of a larger geographical scale mostly in priority areas or less-studied vegetation types to better understand species distribution and to increase the number of AMF species that may still be discovered in Mexico. The inventory allows the definition of strategies for future studies in Mexico, a very biodiverse country, aiming to expand knowledge of AMF distribution as well as allowing the description of new taxa.

Keywords: distribution, ecology, mycorrhiza, taxonomy, vegetation types.

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