Presenter: Aaron Nelson
Faculty Mentor: Roo Vandergrift, Bitty Roy
Presentation Type: Poster 78
Primary Research Area: Science
Major: Biology
Funding Source: UROP mini-grant $1000; UnderGrEBES award, GrEBES (Graduate Evolutionary Biology and Ecology Students) $500
Endophytes are defined as fungi that grow within plant tissues without causing disease symptoms. Virtually all terrestrial plants on earth possess endophytic fungi, and while some benefits for the plant hosts have been observed, the benefits for many of the fungal partners are still unknown. One hypothesis is that endophytic fungi within leaves gain enhanced dispersal abilities to other substrates when the leaves fall. This would require that endophytes have the ability to transfer from leaf-tissues into other substrates such as woody litter. We set out to test the presence of this ability and to gain an initial glimpse of how widespread this ability may be among fungal endophytes. We accomplished this by surface-sterilizing leaves from an evergreen tree (Nectandra lineatifolia) and placing leaf fragments onto pieces of sterilized birch wood, giving endophytes an opportunity to colonize the wood. Fungal cultures were then grown out of the wood onto agar plates and isolated, resulting in 477 fungal isolates, 64 of which we determined to be morphologically distinct from one another. The DNA from each morphotype was extracted and amplified and is currently being analyzed. Our finding that a multitude of fungal endophytes can readily transfer to a woody substrates suggests that endophytism may play a major roles both in the dispersal of fungi and in the ecology of decomposition in forests in general.