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- Title
Biodiversity of foliar fungal endophytes in white spruce (Picea glauca) from southern Québec.
- Authors
Stefani, F. O. P.; Bérubé, J. A.
- Abstract
The objective of this study was to investigate the foliar endophyte biodiversity of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss to establish a baseline for future comparative studies examining the impact of forestry practices. It identifies for the first time endophytic fungi living inside the needles of white spruce from 280 needles collected in seven natural stands in southern Québec. The endophyte colonization rate on surface sterilized needles was 53.2%. We performed a PCR-RFLP and sequence analysis on the ITS region of the nuclear ribosomal DNA to achieve molecular identification. Isolate ITS sequences were compared with data from GenBank presenting the best similarity and were analyzed by a maximum of parsimony and Bayesian inference. Relationships between morphological groups, digestion groups, and sequence groups were investigated. In all, 23 morphotypes were found to belong to 14 sequence groups and we demonstrated that morphological groups are poor indicators for estimating species diversity. This study is the first to establish species richness values for foliar endophytes. Among the 141 isolates in this study, 75.15% have a high sequence similarity with Lophodermium piceae, 10.95% with an unknown species of Mycosphaerella, and 5.5% with two species of the genus Hypoxylon. Distribution, incidence and biological significance of all the endophytes found in this study are discussed.
- Subjects
BIODIVERSITY; ENDOPHYTIC fungi; WHITE spruce; ENDOPHYTES; PLANT species; MYCOSPHAERELLA; DNA; PLANT-fungus relationships; PLANT diversity
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Botany, 2006, Vol 84, Issue 5, p777
- ISSN
0008-4026
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1139/B06-022