Endophytic fungal communities in woody perennials of three tropical forest types of the Western Ghats, southern India

Abstract

Fungal endophytes of tropical trees are expected to be exceptionally species rich as a consequence of high tree diversity in the tropics and the purported host restriction among the endophytes. Based on this premise, endophytes have been regarded as a focal group for estimating fungal numbers because their possible hyperdiverse nature would reflect significantly global fungal diversity. We present our consolidated ten-year work on 75 dicotyledonous tree hosts belonging to 33 families and growing in three different types of tropical forests of the NBR in the Western Ghats, southern India. We conclude that endophyte diversity in these forests is limited due to loose host affiliations among endophytes. Some endophytes have a wide host range and colonize taxonomically disparate hosts suggesting adaptations in them to counter a variety of defense chemicals in their hosts. Furthermore, such polyphagous endophytes dominate the endophyte assemblages of different tree hosts. Individual leaves may be densely colonized but only by a few endophyte species. It appears that the environment (the type of forest in this case) has a larger role in determining the endophyte assemblage of a plant host than the taxonomy of the host

Fungal communities of symptomless bark of tropical trees

“…Dattaraja, H.S. Suresh & R. Sukumar, unpublished data -see Suryanarayanan et al 2011a) supports a higher phellophyte diversity as has been observed for endophytic fungi (Arnold et al 2000).…”

“…Among the endophytes, those that infect leaves have been studied for their diversity (eg. Suryanarayanan et al 2011a) and technological potential (Suryanarayanan et al 2009a, Verma et al 2009, Suryanarayanan et al 2012. However, there are very few studies on endophytes which reside in the outer barks of trees.…”

Endolichenic fungi: the lesser known fungal associates of lichens

“…In a recent study, Chagnon et al (2016) conclude that endolichenic fungi are not strictly host specific and behave as generalists when compared with endophytes. Some endophytic fungi such as Colletotrichum, Pestalotiopsis, Phomopsis and Xylaria (Suryanarayanan et al 2011; Govinda Rajulu et al 2013; Sudhakara Reddy et al 2016) also exhibit loose host affiliation and infect taxonomically unrelated plants. Different lichen species from different habitats have to be screened to determine the prevalence of such cosmopolitan endolichenic fungi.…”

A search for antiplasmodial metabolites among fungal endophytes of terrestrial and marine plants of southern India

“…Pharmaceutically important secondary metabolites-producing endophytes, compatible with in vitro cultures offer special advantages that include cost-effective large scale production of the metabolites in industrial laboratory settings. In this regard, endophytes from marine habitats appear to be unique since many of them produce different novel (Bugni and Ireland 2004;Jones et al 2008;Raghukumar 2008;Schulz et al 2008;Kjer et al 2010;Suryanarayanan et al 2011;Flewelling et al 2013). Nearly 30% of the novel metabolites produced by marine-derived fungi are from fungi associated with marine algae (Bugni and Ireland 2004); some of these fungi produce metabolites having hitherto unknown carbon frameworks (Kjer et al 2010) .…”

“…All these isolates were maintained in Vivekananda Institute of Tropical Mycology (VINSTROM), Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Chennai. The endophytes were isolated by surface sterilising the plant tissues with ethanol and sodium hypochlorite (Suryanarayanan et al 2010(Suryanarayanan et al , 2011Murali et al 2013 …”