Occurrence of microfungi as litter colonizers and endophytes in varied plant species from the Western Ghats forests, Goa, India

Abstract

30 widely distributed plant species from the Western Ghat forest in Goa were randomly selected and were studied with regard to their fungal association as endophytes and litter colonizers. This effort resulted in the recovery of more than 6500 isolates of microfungi which were assignable to 675 species of fungi belonging to 275 genera which included properly recognized Mucorales(1), Ascomycetes (18), Hyphomycetous asexual fungi (289), Coelomycetous asexual fungi (22) and undetermined taxa (77), besides a sizable number of non-sporulating forms (268). Species of endophytes (53) and litter colonizers (77) were selected for enzyme studies. Ten taxa occurred both as endophytes and litter colonizers. Endophytes and litter colonizers showed different enzyme profiles indicating that habit and habitat dictated enzyme activity. Several recovered fungi were new to science and some have already been described as new species and are elaborated here in this paper. Some taxa showed substrate specificity others were diverse in their distribution. Not a single taxon was found to occur on all 26 plant species and only three taxa showed more than 50% association with all the 26 plant species. This shows evidence towards substrate preference in fungi in relation to their host plants.