Study on diversity of fungal endophytes in wild Rubiaceae from tropical forests

Fungal endophytes are major drivers of tropical forest dynamics; they can influence plant fitness by stimulating growth, suppressing diseases, promoting stress tolerance/resistance, and mobilizing nutrients. The current study was designed to understand the effect of region, leaf developmental stage, and tissue type on community composition and diversity of endophytes spanning a range of tropical plant species in the coffee family (Rubiaceae). We hypothesized that endophyte communities would be affected by all these factors and those changes would be detectable using targeted amplicon sequencing (metabarcoding).