Biotic invaders are species that establish a new range in which they proliferate, spread, and persist to the detriment of the environment. They are the most important ecological outcomes from the unprecedented alterations in the distribution of the earth's biota brought about largely through human transport and commerce. In a world without borders, few if any areas remain sheltered from these im- migrations. The fate of immigrants is decidedly mixed. Few survive the hazards of chronic and stochastic forces, and only a small fraction become naturalized. In turn, some naturalized species do become invasive. There are several potential reasons why some immigrant species prosper: some escape from the constraints of their native predators or parasites; others are aided by human-caused disturbance that disrupts native communities. Ironically, many biotic invasions are apparently facilitated by cultivation and husbandry, unintentional actions that foster immigrant populations until they are self-perpetuating and uncontrollable. Whatever the cause, biotic invaders can in many cases inflict enormous environmental damage: (1) Animal invaders can cause extinctions of vulnerable native species through predation, grazing, competition, and habitat alteration. (2) Plant invaders can completely alter the fire regime, nutrient cycling, hydrology, and energy budgets in a native ecosystem and can greatly diminish the abundance or survival of native species. (3) In agriculture, the principal pests of temperate crops are nonindigenous, and the combined expenses of pest control and crop losses constitute an onerous "tax" on food, fiber, and forage production. (4) The global cost of virulent plant and animal diseases caused by parasites transported to new ranges and presented with susceptible new hosts is currently incalculable. Identifying future invaders and taking effective steps to prevent their dispersal and establishment con- stitutes an enormous challenge to both conservation and international commerce. Detection and management when exclusion fails have proved daunting for varied reasons: (1) Efforts to identify general attributes of future invaders have often been inconclusive. (2) Predicting susceptible locales for future invasions seems even more problematic, given the enormous differences in the rates of arrival among potential invaders. (3) Eradication of an established invader is rare, and control efforts vary enormously in their efficacy. Successful control, however, depends more on commitment and continuing diligence than on the efficacy of specific tools themselves. (4) Control of biotic invasions is most effective when it employs a long-term, ecosystem- wide strategy rather than a tactical approach focused on battling individual invaders. (5) Prevention of invasions is much less costly than post-entry control. Revamping national and international quarantine laws by adopting a "guilty until proven innocent" approach would be a productive first step. Failure to address the issue of biotic invasions could effectively result in severe global consequences, including wholesale loss of agricultural, forestry, and fishery resources in some regions, disruption of the ecological processes that supply natural services on which human enterprise depends, and the creation of homogeneous, impoverished ecosystems composed of cosmopolitan species. Given their current scale, biotic invasions have taken their place alongside human-driven atmospheric and oceanic alterations as major agents of global change. Left unchecked, they will influence these other forces in profound but still unpredictable ways.

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Biotic invasions: causes, epidemiology, global consequences, and control

Six DNA regions were evaluated as potential DNA barcodes for Fungi, the second largest kingdom of eukaryotic life, by a multinational, multilaboratory consortium. The region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 used as the animal barcode was excluded as a potential marker, because it is difficult to amplify in fungi, often includes large introns, and can be insufficiently variable. Three subunits from the nuclear ribosomal RNA cistron were compared together with regions of three representative protein-coding genes (largest subunit of RNA polymerase II, second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II, and minichromosome maintenance protein). Although the protein-coding gene regions often had a higher percent of correct identification compared with ribosomal markers, low PCR amplification and sequencing success eliminated them as candidates for a universal fungal barcode. Among the regions of the ribosomal cistron, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region has the highest probability of successful identification for the broadest range of fungi, with the most clearly defined barcode gap between inter- and intraspecific variation. The nuclear ribosomal large subunit, a popular phylogenetic marker in certain groups, had superior species resolution in some taxonomic groups, such as the early diverging lineages and the ascomycete yeasts, but was otherwise slightly inferior to the ITS. The nuclear ribosomal small subunit has poor species-level resolution in fungi. ITS will be formally proposed for adoption as the primary fungal barcode marker to the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, with the possibility that supplementary barcodes may be developed for particular narrowly circumscribed taxonomic groups.

/pdf/nuclear-ribosomal-internal-transcribed-spacer-its-region-as-9rhgb6gvih.pdf

Nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region as a universal DNA barcode marker for Fungi

The nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region is the formal fungal barcode and in most cases the marker of choice for the exploration of fungal diversity in environmental samples. Two problems are particularly acute in the pursuit of satisfactory taxonomic assignment of newly generated ITS sequences: (i) the lack of an inclusive, reliable public reference data set and (ii) the lack of means to refer to fungal species, for which no Latin name is available in a standardized stable way. Here, we report on progress in these regards through further development of the UNITE database (http://unite.ut.ee) for molecular identification of fungi. All fungal species represented by at least two ITS sequences in the international nucleotide sequence databases are now given a unique, stable name of the accession number type (e.g. Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus|GU586904|SH133781.05FU), and their taxonomic and ecological annotations were corrected as far as possible through a distributed, third-party annotation effort. We introduce the term ‘species hypothesis’ (SH) for the taxa discovered in clustering on different similarity thresholds (97–99%). An automatically or manually designated sequence is chosen to represent each such SH. These reference sequences are released (http://unite.ut.ee/repository.php) for use by the scientific community in, for example, local sequence similarity searches and in the QIIME pipeline. The system and the data will be updated automatically as the number of public fungal ITS sequences grows. We invite everybody in the position to improve the annotation or metadata associated with their particular fungal lineages of expertise to do so through the new Web-based sequence management system in UNITE.

http://web.stanford.edu/~kpeay/papers/Koljalg_2013_MEC.pdf

Towards a unified paradigm for sequence-based identification of fungi

Infectious diseases can cause rapid population declines or species extinctions. Many pathogens of terrestrial and marine taxa are sensitive to temperature, rainfall, and humidity, creating synergisms that could affect biodiversity. Climate warming can increase pathogen development and survival rates, disease transmission, and host susceptibility. Although most host-parasite systems are predicted to experience more frequent or severe disease impacts with warming, a subset of pathogens might decline

/pdf/climate-warming-and-disease-risks-for-terrestrial-and-marine-gttfcx5ulf.pdf

Climate Warming and Disease Risks for Terrestrial and Marine Biota

https://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/downloads/Nguyenetal2015b.pdf

FUNGuild: An open annotation tool for parsing fungal community datasets by ecological guild

Phylogenetic diversity of insecticolous fusaria inferred from multilocus DNA sequence data and their molecular identification via FUSARIUM-ID and Fusarium MLST Kerry O'Donnell Bacterial Foodborne Pathogens and Mycology Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Peoria, Illinois 61604-3999 Richard A. Humber Biological Integrated Pest Management Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, R.W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, Ithaca, New York 14853-0001 David M. Geiser Seogchan Kang Bongsoo Park Department of Plant Pathology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-4506 Vincent A.R.G. Robert Pedro W. Crous CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Center, Utrecht, the Netherlands Peter R. Johnston ICMP, Landcare Research, Auckland, New Zealand Takayuki Aoki In Press at Mycologia, published on November 15, 2011 as doi:10.3852/11-179

Short title: Insecticolous fusaria Phylogenetic diversity of insecticolous fusaria inferred from multilocus DNA sequence data and their molecular identification via FUSARIUM-ID and Fusarium MLST

Entomophthoromycota : a new phylum and reclassification for entomophthoroid fungi

The anamorph genus Metarhizium is composed of arthropod pathogens, several with broad geographic and host ranges. Members of the genus, including "M. anisopliae var. frigidum" nomen nudum and Metarhizium flavoviride, have been used as biological insecticides. In a recent revision of the genus the variety "M. anisopliae var. frigidum" was suggested to be a synonym of M. flavoviride based largely on ITS sequence phylogenetic analysis. In this study we conducted morphological evaluations and multigene phylogenetic analyses with EF-1alpha, RPB1 and RPB2 for strains of M. flavoviride and "M. anisopliae var. frigidum." Included in these evaluations were the ex-type of M. flavoviride var. flavoviride and what likely would be considered the "ex-type' of the invalidly published taxon "M. anisopliae var. frigidum". Based on morphological and molecular evidence we conclude that "M. anisopliae var. frigidum" is distinct from M. flavoviride and the taxon M. frigidum sp. nov. is described.

Metarhizium frigidum sp. nov.: a cryptic species of M. anisopliae and a member of the M. flavoviride complex

In 1989, populations of North American gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, in seven contiguous northeastern states were severely reduced by a fungal pathogen. Based on morphology, development, and pathology, this organism appeared to be Entomophaga maimaiga. We have now used allozyme and restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses to confirm this identification. Previously, this mycopathogen had been reported only from gypsy moth populations in Japan. During 1989, E. maimaiga occurred only in areas that had been initially defoliated by gypsy moth >10 years ago. E. maimaiga caused 60-88% mortality in late instar larvae on research sites in central Massachusetts.

Allozyme and restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses confirm Entomophaga maimaiga responsible for 1989 epizootics in North American gypsy moth populations.

Fungi were isolated from soybean cyst nematode (SCN, Heterodera glycines) eggs collected in China, and 253 fungal isolates were assayed for production of compounds active against SCN and root-knot nematode (RKN, Meloidogyne incognita). Fungal isolates were grown for 3 and 7 days in potato dextrose broth (PDB), the culture broths were sterile-filtered to remove fungal biomass, and the filtrates were placed into 24-well plates to test for effects on egg hatch and juvenile motility. Meloidogyne incognita egg hatch ranged from 2 to 121% of hatch in PDB controls and H. glycines hatch from 15 to 224%. Activities of filtrates harvested after 3 and 7 days were significantly correlated. Only four isolates produced filtrates that significantly inhibited juvenile motility of SCN, RKN or both nematodes. This study identified fungal isolates capable of producing compounds active against these nematodes, and demonstrated that there was a low correlation in activity against SCN and RKN. The active fungal isolates are candidates for studies on identification of potential nematicides.

Richard A. Humber

Papers

Short title: Insecticolous fusaria Phylogenetic diversity of insecticolous fusaria inferred from multilocus DNA sequence data and their molecular identification via FUSARIUM-ID and Fusarium MLST

Entomophthoromycota : a new phylum and reclassification for entomophthoroid fungi

Metarhizium frigidum sp. nov.: a cryptic species of M. anisopliae and a member of the M. flavoviride complex

Allozyme and restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses confirm Entomophaga maimaiga responsible for 1989 epizootics in North American gypsy moth populations.

Activity of fungal culture filtrates against soybean cyst nematode and root-knot nematode egg hatch and juvenile motility