Endophytic Fungal Diversity on Different Aged Bark of Medicinal Taxus Plant Species

The present study investigated the endophytic biodiversity on different aged Taxus bark using highthroughput sequencing. Fungi from the five Taxus species, including Taxus yunnanensis, T. media, T. chinensis, and two unidentified Taxus species I and II, were identified by Internal Transcribed Spacer sequence analysis. The operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were 141, 114, 98, 67 and 36, respectively, while the genera numbers were 22, 14, 16, 9 and 10 from the species distribution data, respectively. The dominant fungal genera were Mycena (94.33%), Phageophora (43.97%) and Paraconiothyrium (34.02%), followed by Pestalotiopsis (1.58%) and Strelitziana (1.15%). Rankabundance curve and diversity index suggested that the major species from the bark of T. yunnanensis (YN) was endophytic fungi, whereas fungal species from the bark of unidentified Taxus species II (HDS 50) were quite rare. Furthermore, tree age notably influenced the bark endophytic fungal biodiversity.