An Arbuscular mycorrhiza (plural mycorrhizae or mycorrhizas) is a type of mycorrhiza in which the fungus penetrates the cortical cells of the roots of a vascular plant. Arbuscular mycorrhizae are characterized by the formation of unique structures such as vesicles and arbuscules by the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF or AM fungus). AM fungi belong to divisionGlomeromycota. A mycorrhiza (typically seen in the plural forms mycorrhizae or mycorrhizas, Greek for fungus roots) is a distinct type of root symbiosis in which individual hyphae extending from the mycelium of a fungus colonize the roots of a host plant. ... Divisions Chytridiomycota Deuteromycota Zygomycota Glomeromycota Ascomycota Basidiomycota Yellow fungus Fungus growing on a tree in Borneo A fungus (plural fungi) is a eukaryotic organism that digests its food externally and absorbs the nutrient molecules into its cells. ... Divisions Non-seed-bearing plants Equisetophyta Lycopodiophyta Psilotophyta Pteridophyta Superdivision Spermatophyta Pinophyta Cycadophyta Ginkgophyta Gnetophyta Magnoliophyta The vascular plants are a plant group including the ferns, clubmosses, horsetails, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms. ... In biology, the equivalent of a phylum in the plant or fungi kingdom is called a division. ... Orders Archaeosporales Diversisporales Paraglomerales Glomerales The division (phylum) Glomeromycota is a taxon within the kingdom Fungi that includes those species that form arbuscular mycorrhizae with plants. ...
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CSIRO: Arbuscular Mycorrhizas
Phylogeny and taxonomy of Glomeromycota
AMF help plants to capture nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil. It is believed they had a crucial role to play when plants moved from sea to land millions of years aga. The short seaweed like roots would have been insuficient to make it alone but together with AMF the plants could have survived. One part of the evidence for this are arbuscule like structures found in the fossilised roots of plants from 300 million years ago as reported in the paper by Remy et al (4-Hundred-Million-Year-Old Vesicular-Arbuscular Mycorrhizae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 1994. volume 91 pages 11841-11843).
Arbuscularmycorrhizas are by far the most common and widespread, being formed by about 170 species of mold-like fungi from the Order Glomales of the zygomycetes and plants from nearly all families.
Although it is difficult to prove a physiological relationship from fossil structures, the ubiquity of arbuscularmycorrhizas in today's world and the tremendous taxonomic range of the plants involved in them strongly reinforce the notion of their great antiquity.
Arbuscularmycorrhiza is the dominant type in the tropics, and in grasslands and deserts of temperate latitudes.
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi penetrate, again contrary to ectomycorrhiza, into cortical cells of the host where typical structures are formed - arbuscules and vesicles.
Ericoid mycorrhiza is a distinguishable type of endomycorrhiza, occurring in the roots of the members of Ericaceae (mostly northern hemisphere distribution) and Epacridaceae (southern hemisphere distribution).
Orchid mycorrhiza is an endomycorrhizal association with an extensive intracellular mycelium, occurring in the roots of the members of the Orchidaceae.
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