Fungal Communities Associated with Siricid Wood Wasps: Focus on Sirex juvencus, Urocerus gigas, and Tremex fuscicornis
by
, and
Adas Marčiulynas
1,*
,
Jūratė Lynikienė
1,
Artūras Gedminas
1,
Aistė Povilaitienė
1 and
Audrius Menkis
2 1
Institute of Forestry, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry, Liepų Str. 1, Girionys, LT-53101 Kaunas District, Lithuania
2
Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7026, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Insects 2024, 15(1), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects15010049
Submission received: 30 November 2023
/
Revised: 29 December 2023
/
Accepted: 9 January 2024
/
Published: 11 January 2024
(This article belongs to the Section Insect Pest and Vector Management)
Simple Summary
Here we investigated fungal communities associated with three species of siricid wood wasps occurring in Lithuania. Siricid wood wasps are pests of weakened forest trees or develop on the stem of dead trees, which may also vector tree-pathogenic fungi. The results demonstrated that, generally, species–specific fungal communities are associated with each species of wood wasps, and that the economically important tree pathogen Amylostereum chailletii was among the most common fungal taxon associated. The study, therefore, provided new insights into the ecology and symbiotic associations of these wood wasps.
Abstract
We investigated the diversity and occurrence of wood wasps in Lithuania and determined communities of associated fungi. Trapping of wood wasps resulted in three different species, including Sirex juvencus, Urocerus gigas, and Tremex fuscicornis. Fungal culturing from adult females of T. fuscicornis mainly resulted in fungi from the genera Penicillium and Trichoderma. High-throughput sequencing of ITS2 rDNA resulted in 59,797 high-quality fungal sequences, representing 127 fungal OTUs. There were 93 fungal OTUs detected in U. gigas, 66 in S. juvencus, and 10 in T. fuscicornis. The most common fungi were Fusarium sporotrichioides (63.1% of all fungal sequences), Amylostereum chailletii (14.9%), Penicillium crustosum (7.8%), Microascus sp. 2261_4 (5.0%), and Pithoascus ater (2.1%). Among these, only A. chailletii was found in all three insect species with the highest relative abundance in U. gigas (15.2%), followed by S. juvencus (7.7%), and the lowest in T. fuscicornis (0.3%) (p < 0.0003). Correspondence analysis of fungal communities showed a distant placement of different species of wood wasps, indicating that fungal communities in each of these were largely different. In conclusion, the study showed that the economically important tree pathogen A. chailletii was among the most common fungal OTUs associated with siricid wood wasps.
Keywords:
insect pests; fungal diseases; symbiosis; biological invasion
