Fungal endophytes associated with the mistletoe Phoradendron perrottettii and its host tree Tapirira guianensis

Abstract

The endophytic mycobiota of leaves and stems of the mistletoe Phoradendron perrottettii and its host tree Tapirira guianensis, two physiologically connected plant species of the Brazilian savannah in southeastern Brazil, were investigated to evaluate host and organ recurrence among endophytes. Leaves and stems of P. perrottettii and leaves of T. guianensis were sampled in the dry and wet season. Stems of T. guianensis were also sampled in the wet season. Endophytes were isolated by an adapted trituration and particle filtration protocol. A total of 1,615 isolates representing 99 species and 20 sterile morphotypes were recovered; 64 morphospecies occurred as singletons. The number of isolates and species was higher in the wet season. Leaves of P. perrottettii were less densely colonized than other organs studied, but were the most species-rich. Conversely, stems of T. guianensis yielded more isolates but were less species-rich. Both plants were found to harbor similar but distinguishable endophytic assemblages. The Jaccard's index of similarity between the fungal assemblages of both plants was 0.82, higher than found for other plants in similar habitats. The fungal species composition seemed to be influenced by the collection season and organ type, as demonstrated by multivariate correspondence analysis. Paraconiothyrium brasiliense, P. sporulosum and Verticillium leptobactrum were the dominant species in P. perrottettii. In leaves of T. guianensis, Pseudocercospora sp., Phomopsis sp. 1 and Lecanicillium psalliotae were the most frequent, while Stagonospora sp. 1 and Phomopsis sp. 1 were the dominant endophytes in its stems. The results indicated that some of the dominant endophytic taxa isolated in this study colonize different hosts and plant organs while others seem to exhibit a high degree of host or organ recurrence. This study represents the first evaluation of diversity of fungal endophytes in natural vegetation of the Brazilian savannah and contributes information about the distribution and possible specificity of endophytes in tropical dicotyledoneous plants.

Season and Tissue Type Affect Fungal Endophyte Communities of the Indian Medicinal Plant Tinospora cordifolia More Strongly than Geographic Location

“…C. globosum was reported to be confined to bark [19] or leaf [38] in earlier studies, but occurred in every tissue in this study. Endophytic fungi often are tissue specific, but most show "only" tissue preference [13,30]. For example, none of the nonxylariaceous species isolated from either leaf or petiole tissue of the palm Trachycarpus fortunei was tissue specific [59] Many workers found that the level of endophytic colonization increased during rainy seasons [48,51,71] and this is in accordance with our results.…”

Botryosphaeriaceae species overlap on four unrelated, native South African hosts

“…Some endophytes are known to be tissue specific (de Abreu et al 2010;Fisher et al 1993;Ganley and Newcombe 2006). However, results of this study provided no evidence that the Botryosphaeriaceae sampled are specific to either leaves or woody tissue, although the frequency of occurrence of some species such as S. viticola varied on tissue types.…”

Partitioning of Fungal Endophyte Assemblages in Root-Parasitic Plant Cynomorium songaricum and Its Host Nitraria tangutorum

“…However, studies on endophytic fungal distribution in parasitic plants and its host are more complicated, for fungal colonization and movement within the two plants can either be facilitated via xylem tubes ( Compant et al, 2010 ) or through apoplasts, intercellular space ( Maheshwari et al, 2013 ). For example, it was found that the mistletoe Phoradendron perrottettii and its host tree Tapirira guianensis shared some common endophyte species while still maintaining distinct communities ( de Abreu et al, 2010 ). Similarly, in our studies ( Figure 2A ) we found that CSR and its host SNT shared much more OTUs (76 in total) for endophytic fungi, compared to CSR and NT (4 in total).…”