Pushing boundaries in above-belowground interactions

摘要

Belowground organisms, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, have long been credited with altering plant ?tness. More recently, research on belowground organisms has revealed that AM fungi also in?uence a wide variety of aboveground organisms via plants (reviewed in Van Dam & Heil 2011; Bennett 2010). Schausberger et al. (2012) demonstrate that the presence of an AM fungus in the roots of a host plant alters volatile emissions and host plant attractiveness to parasitoids in the presence of herbivores. This extends previous studies that have focused on direct interactions of AM with plants (e.g. mycorrhizal fungal–plant– herbivore interactions; reviewed in Gehring & Bennett 2009), but have not conclusively demonstrated how belowground organisms, and AM fungi in particular, in?uence third trophic level organisms such as parasitoids (Gange, Brown & Aplin 2003; Guerrieri et al. 2004; Hempel et al. 2009; Leitner et al. 2010; Hoffmann, Vierheilig & Schausberger 2011a,b; Wooley & Paine 2011) via the release of plant volatiles that attract parasitoids that attack herbivores on host plants.