Abstract
Most studies of endophytic symbionts have focused on terrestrial plants, neglecting the ecologically and economically important plants present in aquatic ecosystems. We evaluated the diversity, composition, host and tissue affiliations, and geographic structure of fungal endophytes associated with common aquatic plants in lentic waters in northern Arizona, USA. Endophytes were isolated in culture from roots and photosynthetic tissues during two growing seasons. A total of 226 isolates representing 60 putative species was recovered from 9,600 plant tissue segments. Although isolation frequency was low, endophytes were phylogenetically diverse and species-rich. Comparisons among the most thoroughly sampled species and reservoirs revealed that isolation frequency and diversity did not differ significantly between collection periods, among species, among reservoirs, or as a function of depth. However, community structure differed significantly among reservoirs and tissue types. Phylogenetic analyses of a focal genus (Penicillium) corroborated estimates of species boundaries and informed community analyses, highlighting clade- and genotype-level affiliations of aquatic endophytes with both sediment- and waterborne fungi, and endophytes of proximate terrestrial plants. Together these analyses provide a first quantitative examination of endophytic associations in roots and foliage of aquatic plants and can be used to optimize survey strategies for efficiently capturing fungal biodiversity at local and regional scales.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the School of Plant Sciences and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at The University of Arizona for supporting this work. DCS was supported in part by a Pierson Fellowship through the Plant Pathology graduate major at The University of Arizona. Additional support was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R01 to A.A.L. Gunatilaka and AEA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF DEB-1045766 to AEA). The authors also thank Kayla Arendt, Mariana del Olmo-Ruiz, Nicholas Massimo, Jakob Riddle, Justin Shaffer, and especially Jana U'Ren for lab assistance and helpful discussion; and Lauren Dominick, Chan Jung, Thaddeus Metz, Jamie Moy, Brittany Peña, Ethan Posey, Adrian Ramirez, Cole Steen, and Brittany Wohl for assistance in the field. The authors are especially grateful to Anthony Robinson and the Arizona Game and Fish Department, Jacob Butler, Kevin Fitzsimmons, and William Matter for helpful discussion and sharing their knowledge regarding limnology and aquatic biology, Marc J. Orbach and Barry M. Pryor for helpful guidance, and two anonymous reviewers for improving the manuscript. This paper represents a portion of the MS research of DCS in the Plant Pathology major within the School of Plant Sciences at The University of Arizona.
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Sandberg, D.C., Battista, L.J. & Arnold, A.E. Fungal Endophytes of Aquatic Macrophytes: Diverse Host-Generalists Characterized by Tissue Preferences and Geographic Structure. Microb Ecol 67, 735–747 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-013-0324-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-013-0324-y