ABSTRACT
In the rainforests of tropical Africa, two kinds of mycorrhizal associations occur: arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) and ectomycorrhiza (Alexander 1989, Onguene and Kuyper 2001, Bâ et al. 2011). Whereas most timber trees form AM, the ectomycorrhizal (ECM) habit occurs in a very limited number of plant families, viz. Asterpeiaceae, Caesalpiniaceae (a family that is partly arbuscular mycorrhizal), Dipterocarpaceae, Papilionoideae, Phyllanthaceae
1Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, Soil, Water and Atmosphere department, Yaoundé, Cameroun. 2Department of Plant biology and physiology, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. 3Laboratoire Commun de Microbiologie (LCM) IRD/UCAD/ISRA, Centre de Recherche de Bel Air, BP. 1386, CP. 18524 Dakar, Senegal. 4Department of soil quality,University of Wageningen, the Netherlands. *Corresponding author: nereeoa678@yahoo.fr
(formerly Uapacaceae), Sarcolaenaceae, Sapotaceae, and Gnetaceae. This may explain the “high latitudinal bias” of the “ecological insignifi cance” of ECM in the tropics found in earlier literature (Alexander 1989, Tedersoo et al. 2009, Bâ et al. 2011). ECM associations prevail in both the Paleo-and Neotropics (Fassi and Moser 1991). In the Congo basin, they occur in the forest continuum from the Cameroonian Atlantic Ocean coast to the open forest in the DR Congo (Buyck 1994), through the Congo, parts of the Central African Republic and most of the Gabon (De Saint Aubin 1963). These forests could be the hotspots of soil fungal biodiversity in Central Africa. Yet, little information and limited data exists on their occurrence, regeneration requirements, and present functioning under such threats as mining, climate change, agriculture, and logging.
