Hirokazu Toju

The kingdom Fungi is estimated to include 1.5 million or more species, playing key roles as decomposers, mutualists, and parasites in every biome on the earth. To comprehensively understand the diversity and ecology of this huge kingdom, DNA barcoding targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the nuclear ribosomal repeat has been regarded as a prerequisite procedure. By extensively surveying ITS sequences in public databases, we designed new ITS primers with improved coverage acr

Many insects are ubiquitously associated with multiple endosymbionts, whose infection patterns often exhibit spatial and temporal variations. How such endosymbiont variations are relevant to local adaptation of the host organisms is of ecological interest. Here, we report a comprehensive survey of endosymbionts in natural populations of the chestnut weevil Curculio sikkimensis, whose larvae are notorious pests of cultivated chestnuts and also infest acorns of various wild oaks. From 968 insects

The escalation of defensive/offensive arms is ubiquitous in prey-predator evolutionary interactions. However, there may be a geographically varying imbalance in the armaments of participating species that affects the outcome of local interactions. In a system involving the Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) and its obligate seed predator, the camellia weevil (Curculio camelliae), we investigated the geographic variation in physical defensive/offensive traits and that in natural selection on t

Species in ecological communities build complex webs of interaction. Although revealing the architecture of these networks is fundamental to understanding ecological and evolutionary dynamics in nature, it has been difficult to characterize the structure of most species-rich ecological systems. By overcoming this limitation through next-generation sequencing technology, we herein uncover the network architecture of below-ground plant-fungus symbioses, which are ubiquitous to terrestrial ecosyste

The network theoretical framework presented in this study will help us explore prospective fungi and bacteria, which have high potentials for agricultural application to diverse plant species within each climatic region. As some of those fungal taxa with broad geographic and host ranges have been known to promote the survival and growth of host plants, further studies elucidating their functional roles are awaited.

Abstract In terrestrial ecosystems, plant roots are colonized by various clades of mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi. Focused on the root systems of an oak‐dominated temperate forest in J apan, we used 454 pyrosequencing to explore how phylogenetically diverse fungi constitute an ecological community of multiple ecotypes. In total, 345 operational taxonomic units ( OTU s) of fungi were found from 159 terminal‐root samples from 12 plant species occurring in the forest. Due to the dominance of an o

In terrestrial ecosystems, plant species and diverse root-associated fungi form complex networks of host-symbiont associations. Recent studies have revealed that structures of those below-ground plant-fungus networks differ between arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal symbioses. Nonetheless, we still remain ignorant of how ericaceous plant species, which dominate arctic and alpine tundra, constitute networks with their root-associated fungi. Based on a high-throughput DNA sequencing data s

The processes and mechanisms underlying the diversification of host-microbe endosymbiotic associations are of evolutionary interest. Here we investigated the bacteriocyte-associated primary symbionts of weevils wherein the ancient symbiont Nardonella has experienced two independent replacement events: once by Curculioniphilus symbiont in the lineage of Curculio and allied weevils of the tribe Curculionini, and once by Sodalis-allied symbiont in the lineage of grain weevils of the genus Sitophilu

Fungi in soil play pivotal roles in nutrient cycling, pest controls, and plant community succession in terrestrial ecosystems. Despite the ecosystem functions provided by soil fungi, our knowledge of the assembly processes of belowground fungi has been limited. In particular, we still have limited knowledge of how diverse functional groups of fungi interact with each other in facilitative and competitive ways in soil. Based on the high-throughput sequencing data of fungi in a cool-temperate fore

Terrestrial plants host phylogenetically and functionally diverse groups of below-ground microbes, whose community structure controls plant growth/survival in both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Therefore, understanding the processes by which whole root-associated microbiomes are organized is one of the major challenges in ecology and plant science. We here report that diverse root-associated fungi can form highly compartmentalized networks of coexistence within host roots and that the str

In terrestrial ecosystems, plants interact with diverse taxonomic groups of bacteria and fungi in the phyllosphere and rhizosphere. Although recent studies based on high-throughput DNA sequencing have drastically increased our understanding of plant-associated microbiomes, we still have limited knowledge of how plant species in a species-rich community differ in their leaf and root microbiome compositions. In a cool-temperate semi-natural grassland in Japan, we compared leaf- and root-associated

The order of species arrival can influence how species interact with one another and, consequently, which species may coexist in local communities. This phenomenon, called priority effects, has been observed in various types of communities, but it remains unclear whether priority effects persist over the long term spanning multiple generations of local communities in metacommunities. Focusing on bacteria and yeasts that colonize floral nectar of the sticky monkey flower, Mimulus aurantiacus , vi

In nature, plants and their pollinating and/or seed-dispersing animals form complex interaction networks. The commonly observed pattern of links between specialists and generalists in these networks has been predicted to promote species coexistence. Plants also build highly species-rich mutualistic networks below ground with root-associated fungi, and the structure of these plant-fungus networks may also affect terrestrial community processes. By compiling high-throughput DNA sequencing data set