Venus B. Kinamot, Alvin P. Monotilla
Endophytic fungi in seagrasses were poorly documented, especially in the Philippines, despite having large areas of seagrass meadows. Thus, this study was conducted to isolate and identify endophytic fungi associated with common seagrasses: Unhalus acoroides, Cjmodocea serrulata, and Thalassia hemprichii from the Philippines by morphologic and molecular methods. Morphologic identification was carried out based on the fungal colony, somatic and reproductive structures. Seven species were identified in this study: Aspergillus tamarii, A. ochraceopetaliformis, A. sydou/ii, Penicillium citrinum, Nylaria sp., Beauveria bassiana, and Uutypella sp. Aspergillus spp. had white to brown colonies, septate hyphae, biseriate conidiophore, and smooth to rough globose conidia. Penicillium citrinum had a green colony, biverticillate conidiophore, and smooth, globose conidia. Beauveria bassiana had white to cream colonies with irregular edges and a powdery appearance. The conidiogenous cells had a zigzag rachis in which a chain of conidia emerged. Uutypella sp. had a white, filariform, and plumose colony. Nylaria sp. had a white colony with conspicuous radial lines and a plumose margin. Phylogenetic analysis using 80 ITS rDNA sequences by neighbor-joining revealed the clustering of our isolates with the closest match taxa in the same clade with 100% bootstrap value. The estimate of evolutionary divergence between our isolates and their closest match taxa by pairwise distance showed no nucleotide base substitution suggesting high sequence identity between sequences. The most diverse endophyte is Aspergillus, which is ubiquitously adapted to the marine environment. The potential of these species as valuable sources of bioactive metabolites are deemed for further investigations. © 2023, Biotropia. All Rights Reserved.
Department ofBiology, University of San Carlos, Cebu, 6000, Philippines; Biology Department, Negros Oriental State University, Dumaguete, 6200, Philippines
