Taxonomy and Ecology Of Inland Sand Dune ... - Mycorrhizae

27vegetated quadrats on each of the June,July, and August transects and 18nonvegetated quadrats along each of theJuly and August transects.Soil samples were taken from eachquadrat along the three transects. In thevegetated areas, soil samples werecollected from the root zone of eachplant species at a depth of 10 to 20 cmfor fungal studies and MIP bioassayanalyses (Moorman and Reeves, 1979).In the nonvegetated area, one soilsample from each quadrat was takenrandomly also from a depth of 10 to 20cm. The soil was placed in plastic bags,and the soil was returned to thelaboratory. An additional soil samplefrom each quadrat was taken randomly,placed in a glass vial, sealed, and storedfor soil moisture and pH analysis.Samples were kept at 4 C untilprocessed.Pots were filled with soil samples,planted with a surface-sterilized cornkernel, and placed in the greenhouse.After 28 days, the plants were harvested,each root system was fixed informaldehyde-acetic acid-alcohol (FAA),and the roots were stained in Trypanblue-lactophenol (Phillips and Hayman,1970). Percent mycorrhizal colonizationwas determined by the use of the lineintercepttechnique (Giovanetti andMosse, 1980).Quadrats from the three separate transectswere classified according to the numberof plant species present to estimate theeffect of plant species diversity onmycorrhizal formation as measured bythe MIP bioassay. The procedures usedfor soil moisture and pH measurementswere the same as described above.Statistical analyses were performed asdescribed above.To correlate the ability of the soil tosupport VAM fungal colonization, asmeasured by MIP, with initial coverpercent and frequency, a portion of eachsoil sample from each plant species alongthe three transects was used for the MIPbioassay. Three replicates from each soilsample were placed in 10-cm potssterilized with 0.5% sodium hypochlorite.