Succession and Mycorrhizae on Mount St. Helens

Mycorrhizae are symbiotic mutualisms between plants and fungi, in which carbon is exchanged for nutrients. The eruption of Mount St. Helens was a large event that covered a topographically complex land area with disturbances of varying intensity that altered survival of soil organisms. Animals from rodents to elk fed upon and transported mycorrhizal fungi through the different disturbance zones, facilitating succession and altering the newly forming soils and vegetation. Mechanisms of interaction among individual combinations of mycorrhizal fungi, plants, and animals were predictable, but the different species combinations resulting from initial survival legacies created the dynamic and complex landscape we observe today.