Do tree cells internally contain fungi?

wulkowicz

wulkowicz

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Here's the article:

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/58102/ April 4, 2011

Here are my questions:

Do tree cells internally contain fungi as per the above? And is a possible vector, an arborist spiking a living tree, active or dormant, carrying fungal material into and through the cambium where the fungi is then incorporated into newly-created xylem cells?

Please remember that these xylem cells should (will) never divide again and so they can act as storage until they are decayed. That decay will then release any different vector fungi in that area--plausible? Can this help account for fungal progressions?

Can paranchyma which can divide, be "innocuated", and act as "storage" and hold "spores" until conditions are correct for fungal growth?

Are our fussinesses about closure, oxygen-deprivation, etc. essentially less warranted because the fungi, of any local species, will be there anyway?

And can I consider a tree to be a literal natural history museum with its exhibits stored in cells instead of glass cases?
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Bob Wulkowicz
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PS" "But Kerney also found algal DNA in adult salamander cells, raising the possibility that the algal cells go dormant in the cytoplasm for transmission from parent to offspring, though he notes that the evidence is far from conclusive."

Would our captured fungi, by necessity stay dormant after their implantation because "their conditions" weren't met and then released when the cell wall disappeared?

Read more: Salamander cells harbor algae - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/58102/#ixzz1IrtIUtbQ
 
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Could be part of tree's defenses like penicillin.

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Very interesting. You're opening yet another door...

There are many other ways to "get under a tree's skin." I can see a wind storm "wounding" a tree and also driving particles, organic and inorganic, into that wound--and without getting into the debate of seal and heal--can or does that tree have a later benefit (or liability)?

Thanks for getting this thread off to a good start...


tubs
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Hi Bob,

Perhaps this link to the article might help direct provoke thoughts...
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http://www.fungaldiversity.org/fdp/sfdp/33-4.pdf

If anyone has 'Fungal decomposition of wood. Its biology and ecology' you'll find plenty in there (and yes it was published in 1988
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Sean,

Thanks for the excellent reference.

1988 was when I started learning about actual trees. Previously, all I knew was not to stand under them during a rainstorm.

That chronicles 23 years of muttering as if I know something. And then again, if some practitioners really read me, I might prove useful.
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In the meantime, I searched on Amazon and found the 1988 book for $892. (Gack! It would cheaper for me to eat a quarter-pound of truffles than to read about them.)

This leads me to go off and start another thread (giving you credit for infectious posting...).

Bob Wuffalot
 
very interesting topic . i think you are scratching the surface of something big here . could it possibly be a form of commensalism ? whether it be the tree or the fungi benefiting most !
 
JATG,

Thanks for teaching me a new word:

Commensalism

For some reason that one hasn't crossed me before.

The idea of fungi in animals or injecting fungis into trees with spikes reminds me a LOT of one of my favorite trilogies:

Getting inside

At every turn there is something new being discovered about how this planet functions. Very interesting!
 
That is an interesting term, and whilst I think it probably is an appropriate descriptor for some of the endophytes it would not be accurate for them all.

To clarify (I hope!) most mycologists that I have read seem to think that the range of endophytic fungi and their relationships with hosts relfects the same diversity of the less cryptic fungi that we are more familiar with.

Endophytic wood decay fungi lie latent in the wood tissues until the localised environment becomes conducive to their growth....this generally means dysfunction in the tree, ingress of air.

I know from a recent conversation with Dr Francis Schwarze at a seminar he ran in Brisbane Queensland, that it is really very hard to isolate (with confidence and scientific certainty) endophytic wood decay fungi from species that have gained a mycelia hold on wood tissues via more external routes.

We really are only just beginning to get a glimpse of what millenia of co-evolution have produced in the environment that we all (me included) grossly over simplify just to be able to comfortably concieve of and describe.
 
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That is an interesting term, and whilst I think it probably is an appropriate descriptor for some of the endophytes it would not be accurate for them all.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes this would depend on timeframe-- fungal endophytes are commensal when latent or compartmentalized, then turn parasitic.[ QUOTE ]
it is really very hard to isolate (with confidence and scientific certainty) endophytic wood decay fungi from species that have gained a mycelia hold on wood tissues via more external routes.

[/ QUOTE ]or impossible--lenticels, included bark at buttresses; many paths in without external wounding.
 
Lots I could comment on here, but I will try to keep this short.
My doctoral work was on a group of fungi (the ergot family) that had biotrophic representatives that were pure endophytes and another member that was purely epiphytic (much more remarkable...and the subject of my PhD dissertation). We argued that the endophytes had a positive effect on the host (grass, in this case) in discouraging browsing by herbivores, allowing the grass to better grow and reproduce. So add "symbiotic" to the possible "parasitic" and "commensal" life habits of endophytic fungi. Remember that we use these terms as a convenience and sometimes the reality is not so clear cut!

When Lynne Boddy in the early 1980's, a co-author of the above 1988 text, started describing "latent infections" by fungi in living sapwood, that sounded to us like compartmentalized infection or the advance front of an infection. If the book is too hard to come by, her publication list is on her web page at the University of Cardiff. You might need access to an academic library site to snag them.

Of course "wetwood" bacteria are endophytic and likely beneficial symbionts at least to the extend that they retard fungal decay of wood at the core of the tree.

Getting back to the initial post by wulkowicz. Sure, fungi could be introduced by climbing spikes. We know it happens with Fusarium wilt in palms, don't we? And with mycoplasmas by leafhoppers. The thing is, I don't think a fungal propagule would get incorporated into the symplast of a newly formed cell. Rather, the propagule would ride in the apoplast, through the xylem conducting elements until it slammed into a perforated end wall or pit. Then it would "bleb" off little yeast-like pieces that could spread further. The "pioneer" fungi probably do this all the time.

The critical difference with the salamander work and algae is that the algae were actually within the living cell membrane of the salamander tissue. In the plant examples with fungi, fungal growth is usually between cells, in the cell wall system. When fungal growth penetrates the cell wall, as in a haustorium (as with powdery mildews), the fungal cell membrane is still to the outside of the plant cell membrane, the fungus is not in the plant symplast.

Yes, these are all pretty amazing things!
 
very enlighting . i would think that trees/plants have a host of associate (bacterial, fungi) that all work together for survival whether it be commensal, sybiosis , all the way from the tree to the soil . what about mycorrhiza ?


love this site always learning !!!!!
 
Besides all the laughs and great fun we have together here, insights from guys like Kevin who willingly share their special expertise with us regular production arbs is great and one of the things that makes TreeBuzz special. Thanks Kevin

I have begun to feel that the relationship between trees and fungi is the product of a long evolutionary dance and that these organisms have co-evolved, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in adversity but each completely necessary to the other.
 
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