Research Cheating in arbuscular mycorrhizal mutualism: a network and phylogenetic analysis of mycoheterotrophy 1,2 1,3 € 4 2 Beno^ıt Perez-Lamarque , Marc-Andre Selosse , Maarja Opik ,Helene Morlon and Florent Martos1 1Institut de Systematique, Evolution, Biodiversite (ISYEB), Museum national d’histoire naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Universite, EPHE, Universite des Antilles, CP39, 57 rue Cuvier, 75 005 Paris, France; 2Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Superieure (IBENS), Ecole Normale Superieure, CNRS, INSERM, Universite PSL, 46 rue d’Ulm, 75 005 Paris, France; 3Department of Plant Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, University of Gdansk, Wita Stwosza 59, 80-308 Gdansk, Poland; 4University of Tartu, 40 Lai Street, 51 005 Tartu, Estonia Summary Author for correspondence: Although mutualistic interactions are widespread and essential in ecosystem functioning, ^ Benoıt Perez-Lamarque the emergence of uncooperative cheaters threatens their stability, unless there are some phys- Tel: +33 1 40 79 32 05 iological or ecological mechanisms limiting interactions with cheaters. Email:
[email protected] In this framework, we investigated the patterns of specialization and phylogenetic distribu- Received: 2 September 2019 tion of mycoheterotrophic cheaters vs noncheating autotrophic plants and their respective Accepted: 20 January 2020 fungi, in a global arbuscular mycorrhizal network with> 25 000 interactions. We show that mycoheterotrophy evolved repeatedly among vascular plants, suggesting New Phytologist (2020) low phylogenetic constraints for plants. However, mycoheterotrophic plants are significantly doi: 10.1111/nph.16474 more specialized than autotrophic plants, and they tend to be associated with specialized and closely related fungi. These results raise new hypotheses about the mechanisms (e.g. sanc- Key words: arbuscular mycorrhiza, cheating, tions, or habitat filtering) that actually limit the interaction of mycoheterotrophic plants and ecological networks, mutualism, their associated fungi with the rest of the autotrophic plants.