Collaborative Research: Diversity and evolution of fungal endophytes in native Hawaiian plants

在几乎所有健康的植物叶片内，都居住着肉眼不可见的真菌群落。这些神秘的共生体，被称为叶面真菌内生菌，跨越数亿年的进化历史，与植物的适应性有关，被认为包括大量未记录的物种和生化化合物。 尽管它们的普遍性和多样性，很少有人知道为什么不同的真菌内生菌物种被发现在不同的植物。夏威夷的地方性和濒危的植物群提供了一个机会，收集和描述一套独特的这些生物，同时确定在何种程度上环境，障碍扩散和植物进化历史塑造这些真菌共生体的多样性和分布在岛屿。 PI Amend和佩里将使用DNA测序和培养技术相结合，从广泛选择的夏威夷特有植物和不同栖息地中清点真菌叶面内生菌。夏威夷的真菌几乎完全没有文献记载，但毫无疑问，它们正在以夏威夷极度濒危植物的速度消失。该项目将列举自然和农业系统中最普遍的跨王国共生体之一所涉及的物种，同时也为未来的实验和潜在的天然产品发现保存生物材料。通过这个项目，佩里和修正将培训当地的高中，本科和研究生在真菌分类学和系统学，分子生态学和进化生物学。

Inside nearly all healthy plant leaves reside a diverse community of fungi invisible to the naked eye. These cryptic symbionts, known as foliar fungal endophytes, span hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history, are linked to plant fitness and are thought to comprise a wealth of undocumented species and biochemical compounds. Despite their ubiquity and diversity, little is known about why different fungal endophyte species are found in different plants. Hawaii's endemic and imperiled flora provides an opportunity to collect and describe a unique set of these organisms, while determining the extent to which environment, barriers to dispersal and plant evolutionary history shape these fungal symbionts' diversity and distribution across islands. PIs Amend and Perry will inventory fungal foliar endophytes from a broad selection of Hawaii's endemic plants and diverse habitats using a combination of DNA sequencing and culturing techniques. Hawaii's fungi are almost entirely undocumented, yet are undoubtedly disappearing as quickly as Hawaii's critically endangered plants. This project will enumerate the species involved in one of the most pervasive cross-kingdom symbioses in natural and agricultural systems, while also preserving biological material for future experimentation and potential natural product discovery. Through this project, Perry and Amend will train local high school, undergraduate and graduate students in fungal taxonomy and systematics, molecular ecology and evolutionary biology.