Plant-driven fungal weathering: Early stages of mineral alteration at the 
nanometer scale

Bonneville, S.; Smits, M. M.; Brown, A.; Harrington, J.; Leake, J. R.; Brydson, R.; Benning, Liane G.

doi:10.1130/g25699a.1

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Plant-driven fungal weathering: Early stages of mineral alteration at the nanometer scale

Authors

Bonneville, S.
External Organizations;

Smits, M. M.
External Organizations;

Brown, A.
External Organizations;

Harrington, J.
External Organizations;

Leake, J. R.
External Organizations;

Brydson, R.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/benning

Benning, Liane G.
0 Pre-GFZ, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

External Ressource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in GFZpublic

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Bonneville, S., Smits, M. M., Brown, A., Harrington, J., Leake, J. R., Brydson, R., Benning, L. G. (2009): Plant-driven fungal weathering: Early stages of mineral alteration at the nanometer scale. - Geology, 37, 7, 615-618.
https://doi.org/10.1130/g25699a.1

Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_806900

Abstract

Plant-driven fungal weathering is a major pathway of soil formation, yet the precise mechanism by which mycorrhiza alter minerals is poorly understood. Here we report the first direct in situ observations of the effects of a soil fungus on the surface of a mineral over which it grew in a controlled experiment. An ectomycorrhizal fungus was grown in symbiosis with a tree seedling so that individual hyphae expanded across the surface of a biotite flake over a period of three months. Ultramicroscopic and spectroscopic analysis of the fungus-biotite interfaces revealed intimate fungal-mineral attachment, biomechanical forcing, altered interlayer spacings, substantial depletion of potassium (similar to 50 nm depth), oxidation of the biotite Fe(II), and the formation of vermiculite and clusters of Fe(III) oxides. Our study demonstrates the biomechanical-chemical alteration interplay at the fungus-biotite interface at the nanometer scale. Specifically, the weathering process is initiated by physical distortion of the lattice structure of biotite within 1 mu m of the attached fungal hypha. Only subsequently does the distorted volume become chemically altered through dissolution and oxidation reactions that lead to mineral neoformation.