Abstract
Colletotrichum species are plant pathogens, saprobes, and endophytes in many economically important hosts. Many studies have investigated the diversity and pathogenicity of Colletotrichum species in common ornamentals, fruits, and vegetables. However, Colletotrichum species occurring in aquatic plants are not well known. During the investigation of the diversity of endophytic fungi in aquatic plants in southwest China, 66 Colletotrichum isolates were obtained from aquatic plants there, and 26 of them were selected for sequencing and analyses of actin (ACT), chitin synthase (CHS-1), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, and β-tubulin (TUB2) genomic regions. Based on morphological characterization and multi-locus phylogenetic analyses, 13 Colletotrichum species were recognized, namely, C. baiyuense sp. nov., C. casaense sp. nov., C. demersi sp. nov., C. dianense sp. nov., C. fructicola, C. garzense sp. nov., C. jiangxiense, C. karstii, C. philoxeroidis sp. nov., C. spicati sp. nov., C. tengchongense sp. nov., C. vulgaris sp. nov., C. wuxuhaiense sp. nov. Two species complexes, the C. boninense species complex and C. gloeosporioides species complex, were found to be associated with aquatic plants. Pathogenicity tests revealed a broad diversity in pathogenicity and aggressiveness among the eight new Colletotrichum species.
Highlights
Aquatic plants are the plant groups that are physiologically attached to the aquatic environment, and at least part of their life cycle occurs in the water or on the surface of the water [1]
The concatenated datasets from the five loci were analyzed with the two methods of maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI), and Monilochaetes infuscans CBS 86996 was used as the outgroup
Two of them clustered with C. fructicola, showing 99% Maximum likelihood bootstrap proportions (MLBPs) and 97% Bayesian inference posterior probability (BIPP), and three of them clustered with C. jiangxiense, showing 86% MLBP and 100% BIPP
Summary
Aquatic plants are the plant groups that are physiologically attached to the aquatic environment, and at least part of their life cycle occurs in the water or on the surface of the water [1]. As an important part of the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems, aquatic plants are a key group in maintaining the healthy operation of aquatic ecosystems, and they play an important role in them [2,3,4]. Fungal endophytes refer to kinds of fungi that live in the tissues and organs of healthy plants at a certain stage or all stages of a plant’s life cycle and cause no symptomatic infections [7]. These fungi are a significant part of the plant microbiome. The vast majority of studies of endophytes focused on plants in terrestrial systems [25,26,27,28,29], while plants in marine and freshwater ecosystems have received little attention
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