Foliar mycoendophytome of an endemic plant of the Mediterranean biome (Myrtus communis ) reveals the dominance of basidiomycete woody saprotrophs

PeerJ

article

Aline Bruna M. Vaz¹  Paula Luize C. Fonseca¹  Felipe F. Silva²  Gabriel Quintanilha-Peixoto²  Inmaculada Sampedro³  Jose A. Siles³  Anderson Carmo⁴  Rodrigo B. Kato²  Vasco Azevedo⁴  Fernanda Badotti⁵  Juan A. Ocampo³  Carlos A. Rosa¹  Aristóteles Góes-Neto¹ 

[1] Department of Microbiology, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais;Graduate Program of Bioinformatics, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais;Department of Soil Microbiology and Symbiotic Systems;Department of Genetics, Ecology, and Evolution, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais;Department of Chemistry

关键词: Fungal endophytes;    Myrtle;    Metabarcoding;    Community structure;    Bipartite networks;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.10487

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The true myrtle, Myrtus communis, is a small perennial evergreen tree that occurs in Europe, Africa, and Asia with a circum-Mediterranean geographic distribution. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean Forests, where M. communis occurs, are critically endangered and are currently restricted to small fragmented areas in protected conservation units. In the present work, we performed, for the first time, a metabarcoding study on the spatial variation of fungal community structure in the foliar endophytome of this endemic plant of the Mediterranean biome, using bipartite network analysis as a model. The local bipartite network of Myrtus communis individuals and their foliar endophytic fungi is very low connected, with low nestedness, and moderately high specialization and modularity. Similar network patterns were also retrieved in both culture-dependent and amplicon metagenomics of foliar endophytes in distinct arboreal hosts in varied biomes. Furthermore, the majority of putative fungal endophytes species were basidiomycete woody saprotrophs of the orders Polyporales, Agaricales, and Hymenochaetales. Altogether, these findings suggest a possible adaptation of these wood-decaying fungi to cope with moisture limitation and spatial scarcity of their primary substrate (dead wood), which are totally consistent with the predictions of the viaphytism hypothesis that wood-decomposing fungi inhabit the internal leaf tissue of forest trees in order to enhance dispersal to substrates on the forest floor, by using leaves as vectors and as refugia, during periods of environmental stress.

【 授权许可】

CC BY