Journal
POLAR BIOLOGY
Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 161-167Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00300-008-0515-z
Keywords
Antarctica; Biodiversity; Black moulds; Fungal endophytes
Categories
Funding
- Brazilian Antarctic Programme (PROANTAR)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Deschampsia antarctica Desv. (Poaceae) represents one of the two vascular plants that have colonized the Antarctic continent, which is usually exposed to extreme environmental conditions. In this work, we have characterized the endophytic fungi associated with the leaves of D. antarctica. Endophytic fungi were recovered from 91 individual plants from different points of Admiralty Bay at King George Island, Antarctica. A total of 26 fungal isolates were obtained from 273 leaf fragments. All isolates were identified by analysis of the sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) of the rDNA. Alternaria and Phaeosphaeria were the most frequent genera associated with the plant. Other fungal isolates were identified as Entrophospora sp. and several undescribed Ascomycete species. An interesting result was obtained for the isolates UFMGCB 215 and UFMGCB 262, which were related to fungi associated with bryophytes present in boreal ecosystems. Some isolates showed low identity in the ITS sequences to sequences of fungal species deposited in GenBank, suggesting that these fungi could be new species. This work is the first report on fungal endophytes associated with leaves of the Antarctic grass D. antarctica.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available