Crustose lichens with lichenicolous fungi from Paleogene amber

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Abstract

Lichens, symbiotic consortia of lichen-forming fungi and their photosynthetic partners have long had an extremely poor fossil record. However, recently over 150 new lichens were identified from European Paleogene amber and here we analyse crustose lichens from the new material. Three fossil lichens belong to the extant genus Ochrolechia (Ochrolechiaceae, Lecanoromycetes) and one fossil has conidiomata similar to those produced by modern fungi of the order Arthoniales (Arthoniomycetes). Intriguingly, two fossil Ochrolechia specimens host lichenicolous fungi of the genus Lichenostigma (Lichenostigmatales, Arthoniomycetes). This confirms that both Ochrolechia and Lichenostigma already diversified in the Paleogene and demonstrates that also the specific association between the fungi had evolved by then. The new fossils provide a minimum age constraint for both genera at 34 million years (uppermost Eocene).

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Host and geographic structure of endophytic and endolichenic fungi at a continental scale.

François Lutzoni, A. Arnold, Jana M. U’Ren … (2012)

Endophytic and endolichenic fungi occur in healthy tissues of plants and lichens, respectively, playing potentially important roles in the ecology and evolution of their hosts. However, previous sampling has not comprehensively evaluated the biotic, biogeographic, and abiotic factors that structure their communities. Using molecular data we examined the diversity, composition, and distributions of 4154 endophytic and endolichenic Ascomycota cultured from replicate surveys of ca. 20 plant and lichen species in each of five North American sites (Madrean coniferous forest, Arizona; montane semideciduous forest, North Carolina; scrub forest, Florida; Beringian tundra and forest, western Alaska; subalpine tundra, eastern central Alaska). Endolichenic fungi were more abundant and diverse per host species than endophytes, but communities of endophytes were more diverse overall, reflecting high diversity in mosses and lycophytes. Endophytes of vascular plants were largely distinct from fungal communities that inhabit mosses and lichens. Fungi from closely related hosts from different regions were similar in higher taxonomy, but differed at shallow taxonomic levels. These differences reflected climate factors more strongly than geographic distance alone. Our study provides a first evaluation of endophytic and endolichenic fungal associations with their hosts at a continental scale. Both plants and lichens harbor abundant and diverse fungal communities whose incidence, diversity, and composition reflect the interplay of climatic patterns, geographic separation, host type, and host lineage. Although culture-free methods will inform future work, our study sets the stage for empirical assessments of ecological specificity, metabolic capability, and comparative genomics.

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The 2016 classification of lichenized fungi in the Ascomycota and Basidiomycota – Approaching one thousand genera

Brendan Hodkinson, Robert Lücking, Steven Leavitt (2017)

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Estimating the Phanerozoic history of the Ascomycota lineages: combining fossil and molecular data.

Christina Beimforde, Kathrin Feldberg, Stephan Nylinder … (2014)

The phylum Ascomycota is by far the largest group in the fungal kingdom. Ecologically important mutualistic associations such as mycorrhizae and lichens have evolved in this group, which are regarded as key innovations that supported the evolution of land plants. Only a few attempts have been made to date the origin of Ascomycota lineages by using molecular clock methods, which is primarily due to the lack of satisfactory fossil calibration data. For this reason we have evaluated all of the oldest available ascomycete fossils from amber (Albian to Miocene) and chert (Devonian and Maastrichtian). The fossils represent five major ascomycete classes (Coniocybomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Laboulbeniomycetes, and Lecanoromycetes). We have assembled a multi-gene data set (18SrDNA, 28SrDNA, RPB1 and RPB2) from a total of 145 taxa representing most groups of the Ascomycota and utilized fossil calibration points solely from within the ascomycetes to estimate divergence times of Ascomycota lineages with a Bayesian approach. Our results suggest an initial diversification of the Pezizomycotina in the Ordovician, followed by repeated splits of lineages throughout the Phanerozoic, and indicate that this continuous diversification was unaffected by mass extinctions. We suggest that the ecological diversity within each lineage ensured that at least some taxa of each group were able to survive global crises and rapidly recovered. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Ulla Kaasalainen:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9899-4768

ulla.kaasalainen@uni-goettingen.de

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 17 July 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 17 July 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 9

Electronic Location Identifier: 10360

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2364 4210, GRID grid.7450.6, Department of Geobiology, , University of Göttingen, ; Goldschmidtstraβe 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2370 4076, GRID grid.8585.0, Department of Plant Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Gdańsk, ; Wita Stwosza 59, 80-308 Gdańsk, Poland

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0410 2071, GRID grid.7737.4, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O Box 7, 00014 University of Helsinki, ; Helsinki, Finland

[4 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0410 2071, GRID grid.7737.4, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, P.O Box 65, 00014 University of Helsinki, ; Helsinki, Finland

Author information

Ulla Kaasalainen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9899-4768

Martin Kukwa http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1560-909X

Jouko Rikkinen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4615-6639

Alexander R. Schmidt http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5426-4667

Article

Publisher ID: 46692

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-46692-w

PMC ID: 6637111

PubMed ID: 31316089

SO-VID: 9fb166dc-c444-46da-b8ef-64963b701602

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 25 March 2019

Date accepted : 29 June 2019

Funding

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/100005156, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation);

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized

Keywords: palaeontology,fungal evolution,taxonomy,palaeoecology,coevolution

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized

Keywords: palaeontology, fungal evolution, taxonomy, palaeoecology, coevolution

Crustose lichens with lichenicolous fungi from Paleogene amber

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Abstract

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Applied use of fungi

Most cited references 47

Host and geographic structure of endophytic and endolichenic fungi at a continental scale.

The 2016 classification of lichenized fungi in the Ascomycota and Basidiomycota – Approaching one thousand genera

Estimating the Phanerozoic history of the Ascomycota lineages: combining fossil and molecular data.

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