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Global assessment of genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity in the lichen-forming species Tephromela atra

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Abstract

Understanding how many species exist and the processes by which they form remains a central topic of ecological and evolutionary biology, but represents a special challenge within microbial groups. The lichen-forming fungi represent one of the best examples in which species evolution and diversity create patterns of high phenotypic plasticity coupled with wide geographic distributions. We sampled the lichen-forming species Tephromela atra and related species at a world-wide scale to reconstruct a phylogenetic hypothesis using three nuclear markers. Samples were also studied for morphological and chemical traits to assess how well the phenotypic relationships with species, previously segregated from T. atra, agrees with molecular data. We used a genealogical concordance approach and identified 15 monophyletic clades, which may represent independent lineages. By combining morphological and chemical characters, ecological preferences and geographic origin we distinguish six different species. Although subtle phenotypical traits are frequently used for describing previously cryptic species in fungi, the continuum of variability found in morphology and chemical patterns in T. atra prevents the description of new taxa with characteristic traits. We observed that phenotypic characters arise in parallel at local or regional scale but are not correlated with genetic isolation. Therefore, they are insufficient for characterizing species with broad geographic ranges within T. atra.

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Acknowledgments

LM, MG and TS are grateful to the Austrian Science Foundation for financial support (LM for FWF Herta-Firnberg Project T481-B20; TS for FWF P25237). SPO is supported by the grant CTM2012-38222-C02-02 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. We thank colleague and friends for shipping specimens from their regions: Paul Kirika (Africa), Curtis Bjork and Bruce McCune (North America); Maria Ines Messuti (South America); Rebecca Yahr, Ave Suija, Mats Wedin, Jan Vondrak, Jaroslav Šoun, Philip Resl, Sergio Favero-Longo, Filipp Högnabba, Richard Tafner, Helmut Mayrhofer (Europe); Lidia Yakovchenko (Asian Russia); Yoshihito Ohmura (Japan); Jack Elix (Australia) and Gintaras Kantvilas (Tasmania). LM thanks Josef Hafellner for constructive discussions and joint field work and Theodora Kopun for the help in the lab work. This research received support from the SYNTHESYS Project http://www.synthesys.info/ which is financed by European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP7 “Capacities” Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plant Sciences, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Holteigasse 6, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Lucia Muggia, Toby Spribille & Martin Grube

  2. Department of Life Science, University of Trieste, Via Giorgieri 10, 34127, Trieste, Italy

    Lucia Muggia

  3. Department of Environmental Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), C/Serrano 115-dpdo, Madrid, Spain

    Sergio Pérez-Ortega

  4. Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1312, USA

    Alan Fryday

  5. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Toby Spribille

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  1. Lucia Muggia
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Correspondence to Lucia Muggia.

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Fig. S1

Saturation plots showing accumulation of transcription (s) and transversion (v) over Felsenstein 84 distance in protein coding sequences calculated with DAMBE (Xia 2013): A, B) beta-tubulin including the whole sequence (A) and the third codon position only (B); C, D) mcm7 including the whole sequences (C) and the third codon position only (D). In beta-tubulin (B) a transition plateau is reached at an F84 distance of about 0.18 indicating that saturation has been reached at that position; a continuous near-linear divergence of transitions and transversions is visible in the mcm7 third codon. Substitution saturation indexes report little saturation for both loci, being Iss<Issc both for symmetrical and asymmetrical trees. (JPEG 43 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 646 kb)

Table S1

Tephromela species analysed in this study and used in molecular analyses. The samples are reported according the lineages identified in the phylogenetic hypothesis of Fig. 3. Species name, DNA extraction numbers, geographic origin, voucher ID, herbarium references and substrate of growth are reported. NCBI accessions for the sequenced loci beta-tub, ITS and mcm7 are reported. Dashes indicate lack of sequence data; samples represented by a single locus in the molecular analyses are marked by an asterisk. (DOC 127 kb)

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Muggia, L., Pérez-Ortega, S., Fryday, A. et al. Global assessment of genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity in the lichen-forming species Tephromela atra . Fungal Diversity 64, 233–251 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-013-0271-4

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