Characterization of Endophytic Fungi from Acer ginnala Maxim. in an Artificial Plantation: Media Effect and Tissue-Dependent Variation

The community of endophytic fungi associated with Acer ginnala, a common tree in northeastern China, was investigated. Four media, PDA, Czapek’s, WA and Sabouraud’s, were used to inoculate explants from seeds, annual twigs and perennial twigs (xylem and bark). Media strongly affected the isolated species number, but not colonization frequency (CF) or isolation frequency (IF). To investigate media effect further, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was done. As a result, two components accounted for 86.502% of the total variance were extracted. These two components were named as PDA-determined factor (accounted for 45.139% of the total variance) and Czapek’s-determined factor (accounted for 41.363% of the total variance), respectively. This result suggested that only two media, PDA and Czapek’s, could be used instead of all four media in this study without affecting the isolation results significantly. In total, ten taxa were isolated in this study. Alternaria sp., Phomopsis sp., Neurospora sp. and Phoma sp. were dominant endophytes while Pleosporales Incertae Sedis sp., Cladosporium sp., Trichoderma sp. and Epicoccum sp. were rare taxa. Different tissues/organs had different endophyte assemblages. All tissue/organ pairs had low Bray-Curtis indices (<0.3) except for bark and annual twigs (0.63). Compared to perennial twigs, annual twigs had a lower taxon number, lower isolate number, lower endophyte dominance and diversity indices. Seeds had distinct assemblage, lower similarity and similar low diversity indices to annual twigs. These results suggested that tissue type determines the endophyte assemblage while age determines the diversity.