Artificial Cultivation Changes Foliar Endophytic Fungal Community of the Ornamental Plant Lirianthe delavayi

Abstract

Many wild ornamental plant species have been introduced to improve the landscape of cities; however, until now, no study has been performed to explore the composition and function of foliar endophytes associated with cultivated rare plants in cities after their introduction. In this study, we collected the leaves of the healthy ornamental plant Lirianthe delavayi from wild and artificially cultivated habitats in Yunnan and compared their diversity, species composition, and functional predictions of their foliar endophytic fungal community based on high-throughput sequencing technology. In total, 3125 ASVs of fungi were obtained. The alpha diversity indices of wild L. delavayi populations are similar to those of cultivated samples; however, the species compositions of endophytic fungal ASVs were significantly varied in the two habitats. The dominant phylum is Ascomycota, accounting for more than 90% of foliar endophytes in both populations; relatively, artificial cultivation trends to increase the frequency of common phytopathogens of L. delavayi, such as Alternaria, Erysiphe. The relative abundance of 55 functional predictions is different between wild and cultivated L. delavayi leaves (p < 0.05); in particular, chromosome, purine metabolism, and peptidases are significantly increased in wild samples, while flagellar assembly, bacterial chemotaxis, and fatty acid metabolism are significantly enhanced in cultivated samples. Our results indicated that artificial cultivation can greatly change the foliar endophytic fungal community of L. delavayi, which is valuable for understanding the influence of the domestication process on the foliar fungal community associated with rare ornamental plants in urban environments.

Endophytic Fungi in Rice Plants and Their Prospective Uses

“…High-throughput amplicon sequencing (HTAS) and bioinformatics tools have been well applied in analyzing fungal diversity and interpreting the results perfectly, breaking through the shortcomings of traditional culture-dependent methods, which are difficult Noteworthily, bioinformatics analysis plays a crucial role in fungal diversity analysis. High-throughput amplicon sequencing (HTAS) and bioinformatics tools have been well applied in analyzing fungal diversity and interpreting the results perfectly, breaking through the shortcomings of traditional culture-dependent methods, which are difficult in application when culturing some micro-organisms [63][64][65]. The Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm (DADA2) and the Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) are helpful for data processing and data analysis [66,67].…”

“…The Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm (DADA2) and the Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) are helpful for data processing and data analysis [66,67]. Based on clustering the sequences into amplicon variant sequences (ASVs), the taxonomy can be assigned to the ASVs [58,65,68]. Typically, alpha diversity and beta diversity analyses are performed using the diversity plugin.…”