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

植物健康的叶子上居住着多种多样的真菌——内生真菌——这些真菌大多不为科学所知，但它们经常保护植物免受病原体、食草动物和环境压力源的侵害。初步研究表明，内生真菌样真菌也生活在无症状地衣的菌体中。这些内生真菌也是高度多样化的，大多数是未知的。由于地衣被认为比大多数陆地植物起源更早，地衣菌体可能是(1)这些隐生真菌的第一个宿主，(2)大多数内生和内生谱系的早期多样化发生的基质。本研究的目的是记录内生真菌和内生真菌的多样性，重建这些以前未知分类群的系统发育关系，并估计主要真菌谱系切换宿主和营养模式的方向性和频率，为未来关于共生和毒力进化的假设提供框架。更广泛的影响包括为3名系统学女研究生提供支持，为4名本科生提供培训，并开发了(1)一个可web访问的树参考序列和比对数据库，(2)一个可搜索的网站，突出了六个新研究的生物省的真菌共生体多样性，(3)一个新的软件应用程序，以提高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.