title: Solving the ecological puzzle of mycorrhizal associations using data from annotated collections and environmental samples - an example of saddle fungi.
abstract: The relation between ecological and genetic divergence of Helvella species (saddle fungi) has been perplexing. While a few species have been clearly demonstrated to be ectomycorrhizal fungi, ecological roles of many other species have been controversial, alternately considered as either saprotrophic or mycorrhizal. We applied SATé to build an inclusive deoxyribonucleic acid sequence alignment for the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of annotated Helvella species and related environmental sequences. Phylogenetic informativeness of ITS and its regions were assessed using PhyDesign. Mycorrhizal lineages present a diversity of ecology, host type and geographic distribution. In two Helvella clades, no Helvella ITS sequences were recovered from root tips. Inclusion of environmental sequences in the ITS phylogeny from these sequences has the potential to link these data and reveal Helvella ecology. This study can serve as a model for revealing the diversity of relationships between unculturable fungi and their potential plant hosts. How non-mycorrhizal life styles within Helvella evolved will require expanded metagenomic investigation of soil and other environmental samples along with study of Helvella genomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Plant Biodiversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, Yunnan, China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Plant Biodiversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, Yunnan, China.
authors.forename: Zhu L
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.|Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.|Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.|Program in Microbiology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey P
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9890-3907
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Townsend
mesh_terms: D001203:Ascomycota / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D017753:Ecosystem; D038821:Mycorrhizae / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000382:microbiology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D021903:DNA, Ribosomal Spacer