Ecological understanding of root-infecting fungi using trait-based approaches

Classification schemes have been popular to tame the diversity of root-infecting fungi. However, the usefulness of these schemes is limited to descriptive purposes. We propose that a shift to a multidimensional trait-based approach to disentangle the saprotrophic–symbiotic continuum will provide a better framework to understand fungal evolutionary ecology. Trait information reflecting the separation of root-infecting fungi from free-living soil relatives will help to understand the evolutionary process of symbiosis, the role that species interactions play in maintaining their large diversity in soil and in planta , and their contributions at the ecosystem level. Methodological advances in several areas such as microscopy, plant immunology, and metatranscriptomics represent emerging opportunities to populate trait databases.