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Presented at the NABS Annual meeting, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2004
in Community Ecology
Population genetics of the aquatic fungus Tetracladium marchalianum: secrets from the deep revealed
J. Anderson. Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Aquatic hyphomycetes are fungi that contribute to energy flow and nutrient spiraling in rivers by making energy and fixed carbon in leaves and woody debris available to aquatic invertebrates. These fungi are haploid, predominantly or exclusively asexual, and have restricted dispersal potential; three factors that may limit the ability of populations of aquatic hyphomycetes to acquire and maintain genetic diversity. Tetracladium marchalianum, a representative aquatic hyphomycete, is used in this study to answer two questions which will improve our understanding of the natural histories and evolutionary potential of these ecologically important fungi. 1) Is genetic recombination contributing to genotypic diversity of this fungus, which is known thus far only in its asexual state? 2) How is genotypic diversity distributed among populations of this fungus within a river and between rivers in different watersheds? To answer these questions, eight polymorphic microsatellite loci were identified for T. marchalianum and used to obtain multilocus haplotypes for use in population genetic analyses. Preliminary analyses reveal higher than expected genotypic diversity, population structure between watersheds, and begin to shed light on this species' reproductive ability
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