TY  - JOUR
A1  - König, Julia
A1  - Guerreiro, Marco Alexandre
A1  - Peršoh, Derek
A1  - Begerow, Dominik
A1  - Krauss, Jochen
T1  - Knowing your neighbourhood - the effects of Epichloë endophytes on foliar fungal assemblages in perennial ryegrass in dependence of season and land-use intensity
JF  - PeerJ
N2  - Epichloë endophytes associated with cool-season grass species can protect their hosts from herbivory and can suppress mycorrhizal colonization of the hosts’ roots. However, little is known about whether or not Epichloë endophyte infection can also change the foliar fungal assemblages of the host. We tested 52 grassland study sites along a land-use intensity gradient in three study regions over two seasons (spring vs. summer) to determine whether Epichloë infection of the host grass Lolium perenne changes the fungal community structure in leaves. Foliar fungal communities were assessed by Next Generation Sequencing of the ITS rRNA gene region. Fungal community structure was strongly affected by study region and season in our study, while land-use intensity and infection with Epichloë endophytes had no significant effects. We conclude that effects on non-systemic endophytes resulting from land use practices and Epichloë infection reported in other studies were masked by local and seasonal variability in this study’s grassland sites.
KW  - endophytic fungi
KW  - symbiosis
KW  - Lolium perenne
KW  - land use
KW  - fungus-plant interaction
KW  - foliar fungal community
KW  - Epichloë
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-176814
VL  - 6
IS  - e4660
ER  -