Rhizosphere bacteria and fungi are differentially structured by host plants, soil mineralogy, and ectomycorrhizal communities in the Alaskan Tundra

The rhizosphere contains diverse groups of bacteria and fungi living near plant roots and mycorrhizal hyphae whose composition and function are key drivers of ecosystem and biogeochemical processes. Despite rich literature on rhizosphere communities, no studies have examined the drivers of rhizosphere communities across plants or soil types in the tundra. We collected 513 root samples from 141 individual plants representing six plant species and three mycorrhizal association types across four glacial histories in Northern Alaska. Glacial drifts ranged from 11 000 to 4.5 million years since deglaciation representing a gradient in glacial history and mineralogical weathering. We found that glacial history, a strong proxy for soil mineralogy, explained the most variation in rhizosphere bacterial communities (13.3%) while interactions between glacial history and host plants explained the most variation in fungal rhizosphere communities (11.6%). We found strong correlations between ectomycorrhizal and rhizosphere communities across spatial scales and sites for the shrub Betula nana (30.7%–54.7% correlated), and that ectomycorrhizal composition was most similar among root fragments of the same plant, followed by plants at the same site, and plants at different sites. This work serves to advance the ecological understanding of rhizosphere and ectomycorrhizal communities in response to shrubification.