Underground Explorers

Tropical Andean montane forests are hotspots of endemic plant species and provide a number of ecosystem services in terms of biodiversity, water, and carbon sequestration. The Andean timberline ecosystems in upper montane forests have been inhabited since prehistoric times for grazing and agriculture activities for ancient civilizations. However, anthropic activities have increased to perpetrate illegal mining and new cropland frontiers, and the long-period drought events caused by climate change increases the flammability of treelines for fire events. This study challenges the understanding of the soil microbiota diversity across undisturbed and disturbed treeline montane forest and grassland ecosystems along the eastern flank of the SE Peruvian Andes. The main hypotheses of this research pave the way to gather this understanding that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi diversity decreases from montane cloud forest to puna grassland ecosystems, which will be related to grazing, fire events, abiotic factors, and plant diversity, and to what extent these patterns are determined by soil nutrients availability. Our outcomes will be engaged with national and international mycologists to expand and find new frontiers of knowledge about belowground soil biota for tropical regions, and this project is open to collaborate with other projects to understand the forest ecosystem functioning.