Presenters: Tyler Hacking
Authors: Tyler Hacking, Geoffrey Zahn
Faculty Advisor: Geoffrey Zahn
Institution: Utah Valley University
This project’s purpose was to determine whether a standard tissue sampling protocol poses any risk to federally-listed cacti. We will use the unlisted relative (Sclerocactus parviflorus) as a proxy during this pilot study. Additional goals included measuring interactions between grazing pressures tissue sampling, and honing molecular detection methods for cactus endophytes (an understudied system). The ultimate goal is to apply these methods to federally-listed cactus species to correlate fungal endophytes with cactus fecundity and disease, and potentially to identify promising fungal taxa for microbiome transplantations. Conservation efforts can benefit from incorporating microbiome perspectives into plant management strategies (Heilmann-Clausen et al., 2015). 40 Sclerocactus parviflorus individuals were monitored over the course of one year - Half of the individuals had 3 3mm x 3mm plugs of tissue removed for analysis at the beginning of the experiment; the other half served as negative controls - There was no difference in the health, growth, or persistence of individuals between experimental and control groups - Sampling 3 small plugs of tissue from the endangered cactus S. wrightiae should be considered a safe method to survey for microbial symbionts - 20 morphotypes of filamentous fungi were isolated from healthy cactus tissue plugs, indicating that there are diverse symbiotic fungal communities in these cacti. Cacti from all groups showed an increase in disease severity, though this cannot be attributed to the tissue sampling treatment. Even the small amount of tissue sampled was enough to yield 20 morphotypes of filamentous fungi, suggesting that the fungi found in S. parviflorus tissues are even more diverse than this. The strong overlap in endophytic fungal species between cactus individuals suggests that the species present are likely strongly associated with the cactus species. These methods have been demonstrated to be safe, and further work should use them to examine symbiotic fungal diversity more closely.