Endophytic fungi and bacteria found in leaves of Phragmites australis from the east coast of North America

The data records DNA barcode sequences and species level identifications of fungi and bacteria that were isolated from Phragmites australis leaves collected in along the east coast of North America. These samples were collected in 2015 from populations of native and non-native Phragmites by collaborators at Louisiana State University from plants that were visibly diseased and visibly healthy. Sites were chosen to represent a latitudinal gradient, so paired samples were collected from populations of each lineage in the same latitudinal vicinity from Maine on the north end to Florida in the south and over to Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of these collections was to determine the fungal endophytes associated with native and non-native lineages of Phragmites and determine whether each lineage was impacted by a similar or different assemblage of foliar fungi. Following field collections, leaves were surface sterilized and fungal cultures were propagated on growth medium from leaf punches. DNA was extracted from fungal isolates, PCR amplified and sequenced using Sanger sequencing. Sequences were used to identify taxa based on the UNITE database. All sequences were deposited into GenBank (NCBI) under accession numbers MT000583–MY000643