Endophytic green algae growing in fronds of Grateloupia spp. were examined for infection frequency from their field populations of Jeju, Wando, and Uljin, Korea in August and September 2013. Three endophytes were isolated in laboratory culture from a G. lanceolata thallus collected in Jeju. Unialgal cultures were made from the endophytes, and their morphological characteristics were observed with light microscopy. In addition, a phylogenetic analysis based on chloroplast-encoded elongation factor tufA gene sequences was performed to identify the G. lanceolata endophytes. Three filamentous green endophytic species, Ulvella leptochaete, Blastophysa rhizopus, and Bolbocoleon piliferum were reported for the first time in Korea. General biological information for the three endophytes was also described.Key Words: Blastophysa rhizopus; Bolbocoleon piliferum; endophytic algae; Grateloupia; Ulvella leptochaete
INTRODUCTIONMicro-filamentous green algae grow on a variety of solid substrata such as wood, rock, pebbles, and plastic , Correa 1997. They also occur on or in other organisms, as epiphytes or endophytes that are mostly harmless, but a few algae have been reported to be pathogens of other algae , Correa 1997 or corals (Goldberg et al. 1984). Many filamentous algae live deeply embedded within tissues of larger algal hosts and this endophytic habit represents a type of symbiosis (Lewis 1973, Starr 1975, Goff 1982, Lewin 1982, Douglas and Smith 1989, Gauna and Parodi 2008. Some filamentous endophytes cause only minor changes in their hosts, whereas others are known to produce either degradative losses or tumoral lesions in their hosts (Andrews 1977, Garbary 1979, Yoshida and Akiyama 1979, O'Kelly and Yarish 1981, Nielsen and McLachlan 1986a, 1986b, Peters 1991, Brodie et al. 2007).The endophytic brown alga, Streblonema aecidioides causes tissue thickening in commercial Undaria sp. (Yoshida and Akiyama 1979), and Streblonema-like endophytes are known to produce galls in some algal hosts (Andrews 1977, Apt 1988). An economically important alga, Chondrus crispus shows severe lesions and cellular damage when infected by the green algae, Acrochaete operculata and A. heteroclada (Correa et al. 1988, Correa and McLachlan 1991, 1992. Similar lesions have also been described in Mazzaella laminarioides after infection with Endophyton ramosum , Sánchez et al. 1996. A field population of Laminaria hyperborea was heavily infected with endophytic algae, and infection changed the host morphology and commercial values (Lein et al. 1991).Received February 24, 2014, Accepted May 31, 2014 *Corresponding Author E-mail: kimys@kunsan.ac.kr Tel: This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
128were measured using Image J software, and the infection ratio was calculated. Grateloupia ...