Communities of fungal endophytes established on the exotic invasive tree Ligustrum lucidum

DJONSILES, F.; NOVAS, M.V.; CARMARAN, C.C.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 32nd New Phytologist Symposium; 2013

New Phytologist

Endophytic fungi live in healthy tissues of almost all plant lineages and represent an often overlooked aspect of ecosystems. More attention is often given to the diversity of fungal communities in adult plants, but few studies have focused on the beginning of the establishment of these communities in young plants. Here we study fungal communities in seeds, cotyledons, leaves and young plant sections under experimental conditions. Ligustrum lucidum WTAit was chosen as a plant model because of its impact as an invasive tree in Argentina. The results reveal the existence of different communities in plant sections emphasizing the presence of two different communities in the apical and basal sections of the stems. Our results suggest that the differences between existing communities would result from differential availability inoculums when the tissues plant are susceptible of being infected, and therefore the concept of tissue specificity and host should not be generalized when the various tissues of the host are likely to be colonized by different fungal communities.