Zúñiga Catalina, Leiva Diego, Ramírez-Fernández Lía, Carú Margarita, Yahr Rebecca, Orlando Julieta
Department of Ecological Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Universidad de Chile.
Microbes Environ. 2015;30(2):172-9. doi: 10.1264/jsme2.ME14156. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
The lichen genus Peltigera has been mainly revised in the Northern Hemisphere, with most species being recorded in Europe and North America. This study assessed the phylogenetic diversity of the mycobionts and cyanobionts of Peltigera cyanolichens collected in Southern Chile and Antarctica, areas in which lichens are extremely diverse but poorly studied. The operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of each symbiont were defined by analyzing the genetic diversity of the LSU and SSU rDNA of the mycobionts and cyanobionts, respectively, and a phylogenetic approach was used to relate these OTUs with sequences previously reported for Peltigera and Nostoc. Among the 186 samples collected, 8 Peltigera and 15 Nostoc OTUs were recognized, corresponding to sections Peltigera, Horizontales, and Polydactylon, in the case of the mycobionts, and to the Nostoc clade II, in the case of the cyanobionts. Since some of the OTUs recognized in this study had not previously been described in these areas, our results suggest that the diversity of Peltigera reported to date in the regions studied using traditional morphological surveys has underestimated the true diversity present; therefore, further explorations of these areas are recommended.
地卷属地衣主要在北半球得到修订，大多数物种记录于欧洲和北美洲。本研究评估了在智利南部和南极洲采集的蓝藻地卷属地衣的真菌共生体和蓝细菌共生体的系统发育多样性，这些地区地衣极为多样但研究较少。通过分别分析真菌共生体和蓝细菌共生体的LSU和SSU rDNA的遗传多样性来定义每个共生体的操作分类单元（OTU），并采用系统发育方法将这些OTU与先前报道的地卷属和念珠藻属序列相关联。在所采集的186个样本中，识别出8种地卷属和15种念珠藻属OTU，真菌共生体对应地卷属、水平地卷组和多趾地卷组，蓝细菌共生体对应念珠藻进化枝II。由于本研究中识别出的一些OTU此前在这些地区未被描述，我们的结果表明，迄今使用传统形态学调查在所研究区域报道的地卷属多样性低估了实际存在的真实多样性；因此，建议对这些地区进行进一步探索。
