The Effects of Plant Hosts and Species Pools on the Assembly of Fungal Endophyte Communities

植物含有大量的真菌，称为真菌内生菌，它们无症状地生活在植物的地上组织中。这些真菌内生真菌对植物寄主有许多重要的作用，如增加寄主大小，防止寄主被吃掉或生病。尽管真菌内生菌对植物寄主的健康和相互作用极其重要，但相对较少的内生菌被很好地记录或研究。关于真菌内生菌群落是如何形成的，以及它们的生物多样性是如何维持的，人们实际上知之甚少。这项拟议的研究使用跨学科的方法来研究寄主植物和不同真菌物种的可用性如何相互作用形成内生菌群落，重点是了解在特定寄主植物物种上有多少以及哪些真菌物种是内生菌群落的一部分。这项研究的结果将为理解植物物种数量的变化，无论是物种灭绝或入侵，还是植物群落的组成如何影响真菌生物多样性提供重要的见解。拟议研究的更广泛影响包括对本科生和研究生进行科学培训，以及开展实验室活动，向学生介绍跨学科的科学方法，更具体地说，向他们传授真菌和微生物在环境中的作用。

Plants harbor a large number of fungi, known as fungal endophytes, which live asymptomatically within their aboveground tissues. These fungal endophytes have many important effects on their plant hosts, such as increasing host size and preventing hosts from being eaten or becoming diseased. Although fungal endophytes are extremely important to the health and interactions of their plant hosts, relatively few endophytes have been well-documented or studied. Little is actually known about how fungal endophyte communities are formed and how their biodiversity is maintained. The proposed research uses interdisciplinary approaches to investigate how the host plant and the availability of different fungal species interact to form the endophyte community, with an emphasis toward understanding how many and which fungal species are part of the endophyte community on particular host plant species. Results from this research will provide important insights into understanding how changes in the number of plant species, through either species extinction or invasion, or in the make-up of plant communities can affect fungal biodiversity. Broader impacts of the proposed research include the scientific training of undergraduate and graduate students, and the development of a laboratory exercise to introduce students to interdisciplinary approaches to science and, more specifically, to teach them about the role of fungi and microbes in the environment.