Das Projekt "Characterizing life history strategies of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi using mitochondrial and nuclear-encoded marker genes" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universite de Bourgogne, Plante-Microbe-Environnement durchgeführt. The majority of plants are partners in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) therefore play an important role in plant nutrient uptake and plant growth and mong the host plants of this symbiosis are many agriculturally important plants. Molecular marker genes have facilitated to identify species under field conditions and now newly developed markers allow to address the genetic structure within species. The present project aims at a better understanding of the processes of population and community assembly of AMF, which can be expected to affect their interaction with host plants. Two main lines of research will be followed, assessing community and population richness on qualitative and quantitative levels, respectively. We will use a set of molecular markers to elucidate root colonization strategies in different species of AMF, and among different genotypes of the same species. Methods will be developed to obtain quantitative estimates of the abundance of subspecies genotypes within populations. The usability of the marker genes for large-scale diversity surveys ('barcoding') will be assessed.