Science Current Event Summary-2

Now, this article does NOT have a hypothesis, an experiment or any other portion of the scientific method, but it is an article created by a U of A faculty member (A. Elizabeth Arnold). It contains a lot of higher-level language, and thus took some effort to decipher, but I believe that I've captured the gist of it. Anyways...

Summary:

This article was about fungal endophytes (endo- within, phyt- of or relating to plants), organisms that have a symbiotic relationship with plants. In fact, the article says that they "are found in... tissues of all major lineages of land plants". The article continues, saying that, although it is known that these organisms are almost omnipresent, scientists still know little (or, at least as of 2007) about what diversities exist among them, or where they are spread out across the globe. In an effort to learn more concerning this, those involved did a study ranging from the Arctic to Panama, observing the presence of these organisms in relation to latitude. They were able to show through molecular sequencing how the diversity, presence, and "host breadth" of endophytes increases the closer one gets to the equator, meaning that tropical plants show a higher quality of biodiversity of fungal endophytes. However, the further north one goes, the fewer species they exist within. The scientists involved found that certain species of these organisms appear only in plants in tropical areas.

Video:
Follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmJVWtTBomM&feature=youtu.be

Questions:

1. Are there any agricultural applications that such diverse endophytes may provide?
2. If not, are there any biomedical applications?
3. How much money and effort did this data collection and analysis require?

Sources:
Arnold, A. E., & Lutzoni, F. (March 2007). Diversity and Host Range of Foliar Fungal Endophytes: Are Tropical Leaves Biodiversity Hotspots?. Ecology, 88, 541–549. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/05-1459

Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/05-1459

Image:  http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/dont-leaf-me-behind

Original Article With Highlighted Key Points:

Fungal endophytes are found in asymptomatic photosynthetic tissues of all major lineages of land plants. The ubiquity of these cryptic symbionts is clear, but the scale of their diversity, host range, and geographic distributions are unknown. To explore the putative hyperdiversity of tropical leaf endophytes, we compared endophyte communities along a broad latitudinal gradient from the Canadian arctic to the lowland tropical forest of central Panama. Here, we use molecular sequence data from 1403 endophyte strains to show that endophytes increase in incidence, diversity, and host breadth from arctic to tropical sites. Endophyte communities from higher latitudes are characterized by relatively few species from many different classes of Ascomycota, whereas tropical endophyte assemblages are dominated by a small number of classes with a very large number of endophytic species. The most easily cultivated endophytes from tropical plants have wide host ranges, but communities are dominated by a large number of rare species whose host range is unclear. Even when only the most easily cultured species are considered, leaves of tropical trees represent hotspots of fungal species diversity, containing numerous species not yet recovered from other biomes. The challenge remains to recover and identify those elusive and rarely cultured taxa with narrower host ranges, and to elucidate the ecological roles of these little-known symbionts in tropical forests.


Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/05-1459