Abstract
Green islands (the re-greening of senescent leaf tissues) are particularly evident on leaves infected with fungal pathogens. To date, there is only a limited number of studies investigating foliar endophytic microorganisms in phytopathogen-infected leaves. Here, we analysed bacterial and fungal endophyte communities in leaves without green islands (control leaves; CL), within green island areas (GLA) and the surrounding yellow leaf areas (YLA) of leaves with green islands of Acer campestre and A. platanoides. GLA samples of A. campestre and A. platanoides were dominated by Sawadaea polyfida and S. bicornis, respectively, suggesting that these fungi might be responsible for the green islands. We detected a higher fungal richness and diversity in CL compared to GLA samples of A. campestre. Leaf status (CL, GLA, YLA) significantly altered the composition of fungal communities of A. campestre. This was related to differences in fungal community composition between YLA and GLA samples. Site was the main driver of bacterial communities, suggesting that bacterial and fungal endophytes are shaped by different factors. Overall, we observed Acer species-specific responses of endophyte communities towards the presence of green islands and/or leaf type, which might be attributed to several fungi and bacteria specifically associated with one Acer species.
Highlights
Endophytic microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, have been detected in all plant species investigated so far[1]
A. campestre with and without green islands were collected at three sites (Molkengrund, Am Kehr and Friedland) in Germany at 1st November 2015. *Note that leaves with green islands contained green (GLA) and yellow leaf area (YLA) samples
The high abundance of S. polyfida and S. bicornis in Green leaf area (GLA) samples of A. campestre and A. platanoides, respectively, suggests that these fungi could be responsible for the green islands in the Acer leaves
Summary
Endophytic microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, have been detected in all plant species investigated so far[1]. Previous investigations on endophyte communities using high-throughput sequencing-based approaches have led to novel insights into phylogenetic and functional responses of these communities to a diverse array of factors, such as plant species and/or plant compartment[4,5,6,7]. These techniques significantly contributed to our understanding of plant-microbe interactions[4,7,8] and microbial interactions in plants[5,8,9]. Our knowledge on bacterial-fungal interactions in diseased plant tissues remains incomplete, as most previous studies have not simultaneously analysed fungal or bacterial endophyte communities[9,22,23,24,27]
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