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Low diversity and abundance of root endophytes prevail throughout the life cycle of an annual halophyte

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Abstract

Plants growing in highly saline soils harbor unique communities of fungal root endophytes. We aimed to gain insight into how these communities are established in natural plant populations. We used cultivation-based and molecular approaches to examine root-endophytic colonization in the annual halophyte Salicornia patula at three time points over a 5-month period, from establishment to flowering. At the last sampling, the endophytic community of S. patula was compared to that in the related but perennial halophyte Arthrocnemum macrostachyum. The presence of root endophytes in S. patula was negligible at the first two sampling times, and remained low at the last sampling compared to A. macrostachyum. The latter species showed a well-established endophytic community in its roots that differed from that in S. patula, which was dominated by members of Pleosporales. Although such differences could be partially due to the host lifestyle, the possibility of a strong effect of the substratum could not be excluded. Altogether, our data indicate that the fungal endophytic colonization of roots is a slow process under salt stress. Therefore, we suggest that, in contrast to what is proposed for other systems, endophyte symbioses are unlikely to impact the development of the short-life-cycled S. patula living in these environments.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. François McNicoll for his constructive comments that helped to improve the manuscript. This study was supported by LOEWE (Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-ökonomischer Exzellenz) of the state of Hesse and was conducted within the framework of the Cluster for Integrative Fungal Research (IPF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe University Frankfurt, Max-von-Laue-Str. 13, D-60438, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Jose G. Maciá-Vicente, Thomas Nau & Meike Piepenbring

  2. Integrative Fungal Research Cluster (IPF), Georg-Voigt-Str. 14-16, 60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Jose G. Maciá-Vicente & Meike Piepenbring

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  1. Jose G. Maciá-Vicente
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  2. Thomas Nau
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Correspondence to Jose G. Maciá-Vicente.

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Table S1

Chemical characteristics of soils sampled in this study (XLSX 10 kb)

Table S2

Accession numbers, OTU clustering, and taxonomic annotations of individual sequences from fungal isolates and clones (XLSX 40 kb)

Figure S1

Sampling site during collection events. The pictures depict the site in May (a), June (b), and September (c) of 2013, and show the position of the populations of Salicornia patula (Sp) collected at each time point and of Arthrocnemum macrostachyum (Am) collected in September only (GIF 156 kb)

High-resolution image (TIF 2452 kb)

Figure S2

Amplification of DNA from S. patula and A. macrostachyum roots prior to cloning, using either fungal-specific primers (ITS1F and ITS4) or universal primers (ITS1 and ITS4), to test the quality of the extracts. Each lane corresponds to a PCR amplification from an independent root DNA extract (GIF 22 kb)

High-resolution image (TIF 1368 kb)

Figure S3

Fungal endophyte richness in Salicornia patula and Arthrocnemum macrostachyum roots at the September sampling. Sample-based accumulation curves show the observed OTU richness and extrapolated richness for S. patula (black lines) and A. macrostachyum (gray lines), as calculated by bootstrap, first-order jackknife, and Chao estimators (PDF 8 kb)

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Methods S2

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Maciá-Vicente, J.G., Nau, T. & Piepenbring, M. Low diversity and abundance of root endophytes prevail throughout the life cycle of an annual halophyte. Mycol Progress 15, 1303–1311 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-016-1241-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-016-1241-5

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