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Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates
Fungal endophytes are a ubiquitous feature of plants, yet for many fungi the benefits of endophytism are still unknown. The Foraging Ascomycete (FA) hypothesis proposes that saprotrophic fungi can utilize leaves both as dispersal vehicles and as resource havens during times of scarcity. The presence...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457945/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923176 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9341 |
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author | Nelson, Aaron Vandegrift, Roo Carroll, George C. Roy, Bitty A. |
author_facet | Nelson, Aaron Vandegrift, Roo Carroll, George C. Roy, Bitty A. |
author_sort | Nelson, Aaron |
collection | PubMed |
description | Fungal endophytes are a ubiquitous feature of plants, yet for many fungi the benefits of endophytism are still unknown. The Foraging Ascomycete (FA) hypothesis proposes that saprotrophic fungi can utilize leaves both as dispersal vehicles and as resource havens during times of scarcity. The presence of saprotrophs in leaf endophyte communities has been previously observed but their ability to transfer to non-foliar saprobic substrates has not been well investigated. To assess this ability, we conducted a culture study by placing surface-sterilized leaves from a single tropical angiosperm tree (Nectandra lineatifolia) directly onto sterile wood fragments and incubating them for 6 weeks. Fungi from the wood were subsequently isolated in culture and identified to the genus level by ITS sequences or morphology. Four-hundred and seventy-seven fungal isolates comprising 24 taxa were cultured from the wood. Of these, 70.8% of taxa (82.3% of isolates) belong to saprotrophic genera according to the FUNGuild database. Furthermore, 27% of OTUs (6% of isolates) were basidiomycetes, an unusually high proportion compared to typical endophyte communities. Xylaria flabelliformis, although absent in our original isolations, formed anamorphic fruiting structures on the woody substrates. We introduce the term viaphyte (literally, “by way of plant”) to refer to fungi that undergo an interim stage as leaf endophytes and, after leaf senescence, colonize other woody substrates via hyphal growth. Our results support the FA hypothesis and suggest that viaphytism may play a significant role in fungal dispersal. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7457945 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74579452020-09-11 Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates Nelson, Aaron Vandegrift, Roo Carroll, George C. Roy, Bitty A. PeerJ Biodiversity Fungal endophytes are a ubiquitous feature of plants, yet for many fungi the benefits of endophytism are still unknown. The Foraging Ascomycete (FA) hypothesis proposes that saprotrophic fungi can utilize leaves both as dispersal vehicles and as resource havens during times of scarcity. The presence of saprotrophs in leaf endophyte communities has been previously observed but their ability to transfer to non-foliar saprobic substrates has not been well investigated. To assess this ability, we conducted a culture study by placing surface-sterilized leaves from a single tropical angiosperm tree (Nectandra lineatifolia) directly onto sterile wood fragments and incubating them for 6 weeks. Fungi from the wood were subsequently isolated in culture and identified to the genus level by ITS sequences or morphology. Four-hundred and seventy-seven fungal isolates comprising 24 taxa were cultured from the wood. Of these, 70.8% of taxa (82.3% of isolates) belong to saprotrophic genera according to the FUNGuild database. Furthermore, 27% of OTUs (6% of isolates) were basidiomycetes, an unusually high proportion compared to typical endophyte communities. Xylaria flabelliformis, although absent in our original isolations, formed anamorphic fruiting structures on the woody substrates. We introduce the term viaphyte (literally, “by way of plant”) to refer to fungi that undergo an interim stage as leaf endophytes and, after leaf senescence, colonize other woody substrates via hyphal growth. Our results support the FA hypothesis and suggest that viaphytism may play a significant role in fungal dispersal. PeerJ Inc. 2020-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7457945/ /pubmed/32923176 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9341 Text en © 2020 Nelson et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Biodiversity Nelson, Aaron Vandegrift, Roo Carroll, George C. Roy, Bitty A. Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title | Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title_full | Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title_fullStr | Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title_full_unstemmed | Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title_short | Double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
title_sort | double lives: transfer of fungal endophytes from leaves to woody substrates |
topic | Biodiversity |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457945/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923176 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9341 |
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