Diversity and Host Range of Foliar Fungal Endophytes: Are Tropical Leaves Biodiversity Hotspots?

Abstract

Abstract. Fungal endophytes are found in asymptomatic photosynthetic tissues of all major lineages of land plants. The ubiquity of these cryptic symbionts is clear, but the scale of their diversity, host range, and geographic distributions are unknown. To explore the putative hyperdiversity of tropical leaf endophytes, we compared endophyte communities along a broad latitudinal gradient from the Canadian arctic to the lowland tropical forest of central Panama. Here, we use molecular sequence data from 1403 endophyte strains to show that endophytes increase in incidence, diversity, and host breadth from arctic to tropical sites. Endophyte communities from higher latitudes are characterized by relatively few species from many different classes of Ascomycota, whereas tropical endophyte assemblages are dominated by a small number of classes with a very large number of endophytic species. The most easily cultivated endophytes from tropical plants have wide host ranges, but communities are dominated by a large number of rare species whose host range is unclear. Even when only the most easily cultured species are considered, leaves of tropical trees represent hotspots of fungal species diversity, containing numerous species not yet recovered from other biomes. The challenge remains to recover and identify those elusive and rarely cultured taxa with narrower host ranges, and to elucidate the ecological roles of these little-known symbionts in tropical forests.

Coral-associated marine fungi form novel lineages and heterogeneous assemblages

“…Neither pool of origin nor Symbiodinium genotype differentiated overall fungal community structure, and less than half of all OTUs were shared between the pools and Symbiodium genotypes. Similar to patterns described for communities of coral symbiotic bacteria (Rohwer et al, 2001(Rohwer et al, , 2002Sunagawa et al, 2010), archaea (Wegley et al, 2004) and fungal endophyte communities on tropical leaves (Arnold and Lutzoni, 2007), there appears to be overlap of a few select 'core' species among hosts, whereas the majority of 'satellite' species are either transient or endemic to a specific host and locale. Several factors may account for the high level of fungal community dissimilarity found within the pools and the Symbiodinium genotypes.…”

Diversity of Tea Endophytic Fungi: Cultivar- And Tissue Preferences

“…Endophytic fungal composition and diversity can be affected by several factors like host species or cultivars, location, soil types, plant physiological status, seasons, geographic coordinates and tissues or organs of the host plants (Arnold and Lutzoni, 2007;Tian et al, 2004;Naik et al, 2009). Campisano et al (2014) studied endophytic fungal composition in grapevines cultivated using organic production and Integrated Pest Management (IPM).…”

Profundae diversitas: the uncharted genetic diversity in a newly studied group of fungal root endophytes

“…Some of these endophytes are localised to specific tissue types and some are found systemically. The leaf endophytes of many grassy plant species, including barley ( Hordeum vulgare ) have been well studied and characterised (Arnold and Lutzoni 2007; Cheplick and Faeth 2009; Wang et al 2009; Torres et al 2012; de Souza Leite et al 2013). The endophytes of wild barley species have been less studied, particularly root endophytes.…”