Worldwide diversity of endophytic fungi and insects associated with dormant tree twigs

Abstract

International trade in plants and climate change are two of the main factors causing damaging tree pests (i.e. fungi and insects) to spread into new areas. To mitigate these risks, a large-scale assessment of tree-associated fungi and insects is needed. We present records of endophytic fungi and insects in twigs of 17 angiosperm and gymnosperm genera, from 51 locations in 32 countries worldwide. Endophytic fungi were characterized by high-throughput sequencing of 352 samples from 145 tree species in 28 countries. Insects were reared from 227 samples of 109 tree species in 18 countries and sorted into taxonomic orders and feeding guilds. Herbivorous insects were grouped into morphospecies and were identified using molecular and morphological approaches. This dataset reveals the diversity of tree-associated taxa, as it contains 12,721 fungal Amplicon Sequence Variants and 208 herbivorous insect morphospecies, sampled across broad geographic and climatic gradients and for many tree species. This dataset will facilitate applied and fundamental studies on the distribution of fungal endophytes and insects in trees.

Climate, host and geography shape insect and fungal communities of trees

“…The sampling approach, identification of fungi and herbivorous insects and the molecular methods have been described in detail in Franić et al (2022) 40 . Below, we provide a summarized version and full details of the statistical analyses presented in this manuscript.…”

“…The copyright holder for this preprint (which this version posted April 18, 2023. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.17.537195 doi: bioRxiv preprint Since the identification of Thysanoptera was not clear for all specimens, a phylogenetic analysis was conducted with MEGA6 63 software using the General Time Reversible substitution model as described in Franić et al (2022) 40 .…”

“…The data used in this manuscript, as well as the detail methods on how they were collected and public repositories in which they are stored, are described in Franić et al (2022) 40 Code availability R functions and databases used for generating the sample metadata are specified in the method section. A customized pipeline used for quality filtering of the raw sequence data obtained from HTS, delineation into ASVs and taxonomic classification of ASVs as described in Herzog et al…”

Genome editing for healthy crops: traits, tools and impacts

“…Currently, climate change is favoring enlargement of the geographical distribution of some already existing and newly emerging pests and invasive plants ( Jones and Barbetti, 2012 ; King et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, the markets and economy require extensive movement of plants and agricultural goods between continents, facilitating the movement of pathogens, along with human activities such as travel and urbanization that promote the entry of new pathogens into agricultural ecosystems compromising crop health ( Franic et al., 2022 ).…”

Climate, host and geography shape insect and fungal communities of trees

“…1 ). The dataset revealed the diversity of tree-associated herbivorous insects and fungi across broad geographic and climatic gradients and for many host taxa 40 which allowed us to assess the relative impact of local climatic variables (i.e., mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, temperature seasonality), host-related variables [i.e., host phylogeny, wood density, hemisphere of origin, native/non-native status of a tree species (“native vs. non-native range”)] and geographic variables (i.e., geographic distance between sampling locations, hemisphere of collection) on β-diversity of herbivorous insects and fungi which might be moved through trade of plant material 40 . To target the organisms that might be associated with plant movements, dormant tree twigs were sampled in winter months because woody plants are often traded in winter, and mainly as budwood (i.e., twigs without leaves and roots attached).…”