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New research from California\u2019s desert landscapes suggests that assumption was wrong. <\/p>\n
Scientists have found evidence of a previously undocumented relationship forming inside the tissues of desert moss.<\/p>\n
What they observed under the microscope hints at a connection that may be older than almost anything we know about plant life on land.<\/p>\n
Looking inside desert plants<\/p>\n
Kian Kelly, a doctoral researcher at the University of California, Riverside<\/a>, collected desert moss<\/a> from volcanic rock fields and granitic soils in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, where summer temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. <\/p>\n His focus was biocrusts<\/a> \u2013 thin living communities at the soil surface where mosses, algae, bacteria, and fungi form a crust that stabilizes terrain.<\/p>\n Kelly also gathered samples from less arid coastal sites, building a deliberate range of climate conditions to compare. <\/p>\n His co-author, Jason Stajich, a professor of microbiology and plant pathology at UCR, had long accepted the scientific consensus. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s been the model,\u201d Stajich said. Mosses, the thinking went, simply didn\u2019t engage with fungi.<\/p>\n To test that model, researchers surface-sterilized each moss sample \u2013 stripping away external organisms \u2013 then ground up the tissue and searched for fungal DNA. <\/p>\n The goal was to isolate what was living inside the plant, not just clinging to it.<\/p>\n Fungi that need hosts<\/p>\n Among them were mycorrhizal fungi<\/a> \u2013 specifically, a group called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, or AMF. <\/p>\n The material found inside the sterilized moss was distinct from what came out of bare dirt collected just inches away. <\/p>\n Unlike decomposers that drift freely through soil, AMF cannot survive without a living plant host.<\/p>\n A review<\/a> of this symbiosis has documented how the great majority of land plants depend on AMF to pull phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil in exchange for carbon. <\/p>\n Prior surveys had consistently placed mosses outside that arrangement.<\/p>\n These organisms cannot survive without a living plant partner, which makes their presence inside sterilized moss tissue harder to dismiss as accidental contamination. <\/p>\n Whatever was inside the moss was keeping them alive.<\/p>\n Fungi living inside leaf cells<\/p>\n DNA evidence alone couldn\u2019t confirm live colonization. Kelly used a chemical stain that binds to fungal tissue and examined the samples under a microscope.<\/p>\n Inside the cells of the moss species Trichostomopsis australaceae \u2013 a common desert moss \u2013 branching fungal structures appeared within individual leaf cells. <\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as I saw that, I knew we had something really interesting,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n In plants that form true symbioses with fungi, AMF builds small, repeatedly branching structures inside root cells to exchange nutrients. <\/p>\n Mosses don\u2019t have roots. Yet what Kelly observed in the leaves was structurally similar \u2013 close enough that researchers call them \u201carbuscule-like.\u201d <\/p>\n No prior study had documented this kind of intracellular branching inside healthy moss cells.<\/p>\n Aridity changes the mix<\/p>\n The same moss species gathered from coastal sites near San Diego, California had far higher concentrations of AMF than samples from hyper-arid Mojave Desert locations. <\/p>\n The intracellular structures seen at the coast were absent in the driest material. <\/p>\n \u201cWe suspect that certain fungi are more helpful for surviving hotter, drier climates,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n Extensive research<\/a> has documented how physical disturbance and warming disrupt biocrust communities, with effects that cascade into erosion, carbon loss, and dust generation across dryland regions. <\/p>\n Desert biocrusts are already under significant pressure from rising temperatures and human activity.<\/p>\n That has direct implications for how these communities survive a warming climate. <\/p>\n As the American West grows drier, the fungal mix inside desert moss may change in ways that reduce mosses\u2019 ability to withstand heat and drought.<\/p>\n An old partnership, revisited<\/p>\n Mosses are closely related to some of Earth\u2019s earliest land plants. <\/p>\n Fungi are thought to have helped those ancient pioneers move from water to dry ground some 470 million years ago, providing nutrients the plants couldn\u2019t reach on their own.<\/p>\n A study<\/a> on the evolutionary history of land plant and fungal associations supports the idea that some kind of fungal partnership was in place at the very origin of plant life on land. <\/p>\n Mosses had been written out of that story. This finding puts them back in. <\/p>\n If the relationship holds under further testing, it would also change what we know about when these partnerships first appeared in the lineage that led to modern land plants.<\/p>\n What comes next<\/p>\n Before the relationship can officially be called a symbiosis, researchers need to show that nutrients are actually moving between moss and fungi. <\/p>\n The structural evidence is consistent with that kind of exchange, but observation alone isn\u2019t sufficient.<\/p>\n The implications reach beyond evolutionary biology. If specific fungi help mosses tolerate drought and heat, those organisms might eventually be used to help restore damaged biocrust across warming desert landscapes.<\/p>\n Nearly all of the more than 10,000 known moss species have never been examined for fungi living inside their tissues. <\/p>\n This discovery suggests there may be many more hidden partnerships waiting to be found.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal New Phytologist<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013 Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Earth.com<\/a>.
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