Fossil arbuscular mycorrhizae from the Early Devonian
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Issue Date
1995-01-05Author
Taylor, Thomas N.
Remy, Winfried
Hass, Hagen
Kerp, Hans
Publisher
Mycological Society of America
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The 400 million-year-old Rhynie chert has
provided a wealth of information not only of early
land plants, but also of the fungi that inhabited this paleoecosystem. In this paper we report the first unequivocal evidence of arbuscules in an endomycorrhizal
symbiosis. A new genus, Glomites, is characterized
by extraradical, aseptate hyphae with a two-parted
wall, and an intraradical, highly branched network of
thin-walled hyphae. Hyphal branches produce terminal,
elongate-globose multilayered spores that lack a
basal septum. Other hyphae penetrate cell walls and
form arbuscules. Arbuscules are morphologically
identical to those of living arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM)
in consisting of a basal trunk and highly dichotomous
distal branches that form a bush-like tuft. Arbuscules
are confined to a narrow band of specialized thinwalled
cells in the outer cortex that continue to be
meristematic. Features of the fossil biotroph are compared
with those of extant arbuscular mycorrhizae.
Although interpretations regarding the evolution of
mycorrhizal mutualisms continue to be speculative,
the demonstration of arbuscules in the Early Devonian
indicates that nutrient transfer is an ancient phenomenon
that may have been in existence when plants
invaded the land.
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Citation
Taylor, T. N., Remy, W., Hass, H., Kerp, H. "Fossil arbuscular mycorrhizae from the Early Devonian." Mycologia. (1995) Vol. 87, Issue 4. pp. 560-573. http://www.dx.doi.org/10.2307/3760776.
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