New study finds that fungi living on healthy plants are sensitive to climate change

Spruces, pines, firs, and other trees ring the globe, towering over the frigid lands of North America, northern Europe, and Russia. These boreal forests are the largest terrestrial ecosystems on Earth and make up the northernmost forests.

Fungi live in the photosynthetic, or light-eating, tissues of boreal trees and in the abundant cloud-like lichens and feather-like mosses that cover the ground between them. These fungi are endophytes, meaning they live in a mutually beneficial arrangement within the plant.

“Being a plant means living in a world of fungi,” says Betsy Arnold, professor in the Department of Plant Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Science. A member of the Bio5 Institute. “Endophytes are essential to plant health in ways that are not yet fully understood, but in general what we do know about endophytes is that they protect plants from disease and that they protect plants from environmental stresses. “They’re really good at helping us become more resistant to the elements. They’ve been part of an important revolution in the way we think about plants.”

More than a decade ago, Arnold and her team set out to understand how these fungal species adapt to different microenvironments and how they might survive under future climate change. We set out on a month-long adventure deep into the Northeastern wilderness.

They found that fungal diversity is very high and that they are adapted to local conditions in very specific ways, suggesting that fungi are sensitive to future changes in climate. Masu. Because the health of the fungus is closely linked to the health of its host, these discoveries have implications for the future health of the entire boreal forest and the planet as a whole.

“Boreal forests are at the center of the Earth’s carbon and water cycles,” Arnold said. “And our study highlights that they are home to some of the world’s most evolutionarily diverse fungal endophytes – endoparasites that are found nowhere else.”

After more than a decade of analysis, their findings were: published in diary current biology.

“Our joint research revealed the diversity of a newly discovered boreal biome of endophytic fungi and their sensitivity to climate,” said study co-lead author Shuzo Oita. He completed his doctoral work in the Arnold laboratory and is currently a research fellow at Sumitomo Chemical. Chemical Co., Ltd. “Endophytes are often overlooked because they occur in healthy plant tissue, but their importance in biodiversity and ecosystems has recently become clear.”

fly in search of fungi

Gathering the data to reach this conclusion was a mammoth task that required Arnold and her colleagues to do some of the most intensive fieldwork of their lives, she said.

Arnold said that for a month in the summer of 2011, the team engaged a professional pilot to “access places that roads don’t have access to.” The six-person team traversed the boreal forest of southern Canada to the edge of the arctic tundra, landing their seaplanes on lakes along the way.

It took off and landed 36 times between remote lakes dotting the landscape. Typically, we spent approximately 6 to 24 hours at each sample site.

During the day, they collected healthy spruce leaves and fresh moss and lichen from the ground and packed their scientific treasures into zip-top bags. They also hoped to drill tree-ring cores to reveal the tree’s past, including its age and exposure to wildfires. They also measured various forest characteristics to understand how vegetation changes across the landscape.

At night, as the Northern Lights danced overhead, they processed samples in a mobile laboratory in the pilot’s quarters. They sterilized fresh tissue surfaces to prepare them for DNA extraction and isolated fungal cultures to visualize and document the bacterial strains living within the samples.

“We would often work until 2 or 3 a.m. and sleep for a few hours before heading to the next job site,” Arnold said. “In the world of fungi, one hour of fieldwork is equivalent to a year of characterization and a decade of potential analysis. And we were able to cover a lot of ground in just a few weeks.”