Fungal endophytes in bryophytes and pteridophytes [poster]

Bryophytes and pteridophytes represent two early lineages of land plants that have co-evolved with fungi for about 400 million years. There are at least 300 known Ascomycota species associated with bryophytes and all basal lineages of the pteridophytes have been shown to possess fungal endophytes. The goal of this project was to isolate fungal endophytes from bryophytes and evergreen pteridophytes species to determine if they contain novel taxa. Bryophytes and evergreen pteridophytes were collected from Pennsylvania in December 2016. Samples were thoroughly washed to remove debris, rinsed twice with distilled water, and the outer surfaces were sterilized. Surface sterilized tissues were incubated at 14°C on malt extract agar supplemented with chloramphenicol, pure cultures were obtained from colonies growing from the tissues, and the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) was sequenced for species identification based on BLAST results against the NCBI database. We obtained 71 isolates from ten hosts. Our current results indicate that there are many isolates with low identity sequence match to the NCBI database. Interestingly we discovered one aero-aquatic genus (Pseudaegerita) and two xylariaceous species (Daldinia childiae and Nemania diffusa) in addition to two isolates that were not identified despite obtaining a high quality ITS sequence.