Land Use Change Reshapes Climate-Driven Diversity Patterns of Tropical Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi

Land use change and agricultural expansion threaten biodiversity yet the effects on soil life remain poorly understood, especially for microbes. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are microbes that form associations with most plant species and are essential for plant nutrient uptake. The diversity of these fungi is also sensitive to both land use change and regional climatic conditions. We therefore asked whether variation in AM fungal diversity is driven by land use change, and whether these effects are further influenced by interactions with temperature and precipitation gradients. To test this, we quantified AM fungal biodiversity in cultivated and adjacent uncultivated soils across a 1700 m elevational gradient (temperature: 7.7°C-16.5°C and precipitation: 1000-3500 mm). We found that conversion of uncultivated soils to agriculture reduced AM fungal richness by 80%, on average. Richness in uncultivated soils increased with the temperature gradient, while richness in farms declined. A similar but inverted trend was found for precipitation, where richness in uncultivated sites declined as precipitation increased. Uncultivated soils contained approximately three-fold more unique AM fungal species compared to cultivated soils. Our findings demonstrate that interactions between climate and land use strongly influence AM fungal biodiversity patterns in tropical mountain ecosystems. Incorporating both factors into conservation and sustainable agriculture strategies will be critical to preserving belowground biodiversity under global change.