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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #343646
Research Project: Develop Pest Management Technologies and Strategies to Control the Coffee Berry Borer

Location: Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory

Title: Lives within lives: hidden fungal biodiversity within insects, mammals, mites, and plants

Author
item BLACKWELL, MEREDITH - Louisiana State University
item Vega, Fernando

Submitted to: Fungal Ecology
Publication Type: Literature Review
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/30/2018
Publication Date: 10/1/2018
Citation: Blackwell, M., Vega, F.E. 2018. Lives within lives: hidden fungal biodiversity within insects, mammals, mites, and plants. Fungal Ecology. 35:127-134.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Nothing is sterile. Insects, mammals, mites, and plants, all hide a vast fungal biodiversity whose role is for the most part unknown. From the work of Lynn Margulies, Miriam Rothschild and Johanna Westerdijk, we have gained a better understanding of how microbial associations pervade living systems and how important these associations can be. An approximation of the total number of fungal species on Earth still remains an elusive goal, but a hypothetical analysis reveals that there can be up to 680000 undiscovered fungal species hidden in terrestrial arthropods and 39100 undiscovered fungal species in plants. Some specific roles have been discovered for fungi inhabiting other life forms, including the production of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phoresy and horizontal gene transfer by mites, plant pathogen hypovirulence caused by mycoviruses, digestive processes in mammals, etc. Conservation of fungi remains an obscure subject, which deserves focused attention by the international mycological community.