Collaborative Research: Hyperdiverse Endolichenic and Endophytic Fungi: A Large-scale, Multi-gene Phylogenetic Survey and Estimation of Trophic Transition Networks

健康的植物叶片上栖息着一种高度多样性的真菌--内生真菌--这些真菌大多是科学上未知的，但它们经常保护植物免受病原体、食草动物和环境压力的影响。初步研究表明，内生类真菌也生活在无症状地衣的菌体内。这些内生真菌也是高度多样化的，大多是未知的。由于地衣被认为比大多数陆地植物起源得更早，地衣菌体可能是(1)这些隐秘真菌的第一宿主，(2)大多数早期内生和内生谱系多样化的底物。这项研究的目的是记录内生和内生真菌的多样性，重建这些以前未知的分类群的系统发育关系，并估计主要真菌谱系转换寄主和营养模式的方向性和频率，为未来关于互惠和毒力进化的假说提供一个框架。更广泛的影响包括支持3名女研究生学习系统学，对4名本科生进行培训，并开发(1)一个可上网的、以树为参照的序列和比对数据库，(2)一个可搜索的网站，重点介绍6个新研究的生物省的真菌共生体多样性，以及(3)一个新的软件应用程序，以改进复杂系统发育结果的可视化和可解释性。

Healthy leaves of plants are inhabited by a hyperdiversity of fungi - endophytic fungi - that are mostly unknown to science, but which frequently protect plants from pathogens, herbivores and environmental stressors. Preliminary research revealed that endophyte-like fungi also live within the thalli of asymptomatic lichens. These endolichenic fungi are also hyperdiverse and mostly unknown. Because lichens are thought to have originated earlier than most land plants, lichen thalli may have been (1) the first hosts of these cryptic fungi and (2) the substrate in which most of the early diversification of endophytic and endolichenic lineages took place. The goals of this study are to document endophytic and endolichenic fungal diversity, to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of these previously unknown taxa, and to estimate the directionality and frequency with which major fungal lineages have switched hosts and trophic modes, generating a framework for future hypotheses regarding the evolution of mutualism and virulence. Broader impacts include support for three female graduate students in systematics, training for four undergraduates, and development of (1) a web-accessible, tree-referenced sequence and alignment database, (2) a searchable website highlighting the fungal symbiont diversity in six newly-studied biological provinces, and (3) a new software application to improve the visualization and interpretability of complex phylogenetic results.