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Light converts endosymbiotic fungus to pathogen, influencing seedling survival and host tree recruitment

Patricia Alvarez¹, James White Jr¹, Nataly Gil², Jens-Christian Svenning³, Henrik Balslev³ & Thea Kristiansen³

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1. Department of Plant Biology and Pathology, Rutgers University, USA
2. Universidad San Antonio de Abad, Biology, Peru
3. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Aarhus, Denmark

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Document Type:

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Date:

Received 22 May 2008 21:38 UTC; Posted 23 May 2008

Subjects:

Ecology

Tags:

• Tropical forest
• fungal pathogen
• plant diversity
• endophytes
• diversity

Abstract:

Endophytic fungi that asymptomatically colonize plants¹ are diverse and abundant in tropical ecosystems². These organisms can be weakly pathogenic³ and/or mutualistic, frequently enabling plants to adapt to extreme environments, alter competitive abilities of host individuals and improve host fitness under abiotic or biotic stresses^4,5,6. Diplodia mutila is a symbiotic endophyte/plant pathogenic fungus infecting the palm Iriartea deltoidea⁷, which dominates many wet lowland Neotropical forests. The fungus is an asymptomatic endophyte in mature plants, and disease and mortality are expressed in some seedlings, while others remain disease free. Here we show that seedlings bearing the endophyte show enhanced resistance to insect herbivory. However, high light availability triggers pathogenicity of the fungus, while low light favors endosymbiotic development, constraining recruitment of endophyte-infested seedlings to the shaded understory by limiting survival of seedlings in direct light. These results provide evidence that patterns of plant abundance and the mechanisms maintaining tropical forest biodiversity are the result of a more complex interplay between abiotic and biotic environments than previously thought.

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Alvarez, Patricia, White Jr, James, Gil, Nataly, Svenning, Jens-Christian, Balslev, Henrik, and Kristiansen, Thea. Light converts endosymbiotic fungus to pathogen, influencing seedling survival and host tree recruitment. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.1908.1> (2008)

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