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

植物的健康叶片上栖息着高度多样性的真菌-内生真菌-这些真菌大多是科学未知的，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，内生真菌也生活在无症状地衣的叶状体中。这些地衣内真菌也是高度多样性的，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，地衣叶状体可能是（1）这些隐生真菌的第一个宿主，（2）大多数内生和内生地衣谱系早期多样化发生的基质。本研究的目标是记录内生和内生地衣真菌的多样性，重建这些以前未知的类群的系统发育关系，并估计的方向性和频率与主要真菌谱系切换主机和营养模式，产生一个框架，为未来的假设进化的互利共生和毒力。更广泛的影响包括支持三名女研究生在系统学，培训四名本科生，和（1）网络访问，树参考序列和比对数据库的发展，（2）一个可搜索的网站，突出真菌共生体的多样性在六个新研究的生物省，和（3）一个新的软件应用程序，以提高复杂的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.