Interaction recovery between European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and ectomycorhizal fungi 140 years after the end of mining

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Rodríguez-Uña, A., Hidalgo-Castañeda, J., Salcedo, I., Moreno-Mateos, D. 2019. Interaction recovery between European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and ectomycorhizal fungi 140 years after the end of mining. Ecosistemas 28(2): 61-68 . Doi.: 10.7818/ECOS.1790 Even the increasing use of restoration, it does not always imply a short-term answer in ecosystems that guarantees the recovery of their structure, functions, and services. So far, most studies evaluating ecosystem recovery have used metrics that ignore the complexity needed to structure communities of organisms that form ecosystems. Here, we analyze the recovery of species interactions (metric with a certain level of complexity) in a large time scale (>100 years). In particular, we characterized, using molecular identification, the ectomicorrhyzal (EcM) fungal communities present in 18 beech trees inside and seven outside an ancient iron in Navarra (northern Spain), in use from the XIV century until 140 years ago, as well as seven beech trees from a nearby old-growth forest. Species richness of EcM fungi was similar for the three locations, while differences were found for species composition in the area damaged by mining and compare to outside the mine and the reference beech forest. Our results suggest the need to assess ecosystem recovery with more complex metrics (e.g. architecture of interaction networks) in order to accurately estimate the real time required for ecosystems to fully recover.