Cryptic functional diversity within a grass mycobiome.

ABSTRACT: Eukaryotic hosts harbor tremendously diverse microbiomes that affect host fitness and response to environmental challenges. Fungal endophytes are prominent members of plant microbiomes, but we lack information on the diversity in functional traits affecting their interactions with their host and environment. We used two culturing approaches to isolate fungal endophytes associated with the widespread, dominant prairie grass Andropogon gerardii and characterized their taxonomic diversity using rDNA barcode sequencing. A randomly chosen subset of fungi representing the diversity of each leaf was then evaluated for their use of different carbon compound resources and growth on those resources. Applying community phylogenetic analyses, we discovered that these fungal endophyte communities are c

SUBMITTER: Ndinga-Muniania C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10358963 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature