Abstract
Despite desert ecosystem being crucial to our understanding of natural geography, species evolution and global climate change, there is limited information on the dynamics of their composition and the diversity of endophytic fungi communities driven by plant identity and organ differentiation. Here, an extensive investigation of endophytic fungal microbiome in root, stem, and leaf organs associated with five xerophyte shrubs in an extremely arid desert, Northwest China, were examined. The fungal community dominated by Dothideomycetes and Pleosporales. Shrub species strongly drive the niche-based processes of endophytic fungi across the root, stem and leaf compartments. The diversity and composition of endophytic fungi in stem showed higher variability among plant species than leaf and root. The fungal communities in root libraries were more diverse and exhibited a remarkable differentiation of community composition. We further demonstrated the significant host preferences and tissue specificity of desert endophytic fungi, and unique specific taxa were also observed. The co-occurrence network revealed the coexistence of fungal endophytes in arid desert, and the root fungal network harbored the highest interspecies connectivity. Members of Pleosporales were the most common keystone species in the root fungal network. This is the first report of mycobiota in both plant species and organ differentiation in an extremely arid desert ecosystem.
Highlights
Accepted: 16 July 2021Xerophyte shrubs have strong drought resistance and usually grow and survive in environments with low water availability and nutrient deprivation [1]
We addressed the following questions: (1) How variable are the fungal communities associated with different plants within the same area in the extremely arid desert? (2) Do the endosphere fungal communities vary among the different plant compartment niches? (3) How do the aboveground fungal communities relate to the belowground fungal communities? Understanding the host
We excluded the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with
Summary
Accepted: 16 July 2021Xerophyte shrubs have strong drought resistance and usually grow and survive in environments with low water availability and nutrient deprivation [1]. Special attention has been paid to the strategies consisting of associated microorganisms, such as fungal endophytes, that ameliorate plant growth and fitness under drought resistance [4,5]. Fungal microbiota colonizes their plant host to adapt themselves to the plant’s environment; the symbionts have coevolved for millions of years [6]. Considering the environmental filter of drought, fungal endophytes of xerophyte shrubs may be different and would bear a unique assemblage of drought tolerance that performs various ecological roles in protecting the host plant in arid desert [10]. Elucidating the patterns of occurrence and ecological processes of the fungal microbiome in desert ecosystems is of great importance
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