Subject: Endophyte definition

From: "Charles P. West" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 17:16:33 -0600 (CST)

(Is in-fighting a form of endophyte?)

About a week ago, I brought up Wennstrom's paper in Oikos 71:535, 1994, 
in which he took issue with some authors on the use and misuse of the 
term "endophyte."  I urged you to read the articles and discuss the 
issue.  I appreciate the respones.  I thought I'd take a few minutes to 
summarize the responses and give my own response (I'm a consensus type).  
I thought I'd wait a week to let people really read the article.

  Chris Schardl threw us a real zinger by questioning the need for the
term endophyte at all because such a broad term, as originally defined,
has other, already-defined synonyms.  I think he's right that most the 
time we use it, we mean a certain group of organisms, usually fungi 
living in plants.  I'm not sure what Chris wants.  I think he agrees that 
endophyte is useful.  It does have a shade of meaning different from 
symbiont or inhabitant.  One of the beauties of English is that we have 
so many near synonyms.  We pay some price for that, though, by invited 
some confusion.  I can live with some.  In fact, you ought see my life.
  George Mueller prefers an unrestricted meaning, but with phyte 
referring to the microorganism (the plant within) and endo referring to
where the microorganism is.  I still think that the host ought to also 
be a plant because, isn't that what we're talking about, after all?  Jim 
White says that endozoophyte refers to an organism living in animals.  
Fine, but let's not coin the term endophytophyte to mean plant endophytes.
  Steve Bentivenga thinks the phyte refers to the host.  I agree that 
symbiosis means life together with no implication of benefit.  By the 
same token endophytism (is that a word?) needn't imply mutualism or 
antiherbivory, but we don't usually intend endophytes to mean killer.
  Scott Kroken doesn't want to restrict the definition to fungi, and 
claims certain algal symbioses as examples of endophytism.  Endophyte is 
a good opposite to epiphyte.  The old, broad definition of endophyte 
seems to embody his request for a term that describes a particular 
spatial arrangement of symbionts.
  So, the real Dennis Wilson came forth and admitted to starting this whole 
thing.  I'm glad he responded.  I went back and found his article, 
which had mailed me months ago "with compliments."  We look forward to 
your published reply to Wennstrom.  Dennis wants to extend the meaning to 
describe the type of relationship with its host, i.e. symptomless 
(nonpathogenic?).  I tend to agree with you, because, again, isn't that 
what we usually mean when we talk about endophytes, nonpathogens?  But, 
Dennis, I don't think we or anyone can fix that new definition. 
  Jim White warned against narrowing the meaning because the wide range 
of users just wouldn't go along with it.
  The consensus seemed to be that the definition should be left broad, 
and that it would help to define your endophyte.  I think terms evolve, 
even in science.  Look at symbiosis.  It's original meaning was life 
together with no implication of benefit, i.e. pathogen, mutualism, 
commensalism, whatever.  That's still a nice ideal definition, sort of a 
baseline definition, if you will.  But what do people really MEAN when 
they say symbiosis?  They usually mean some one-way or two-way benefit.  
If the word symbiosis communicates that idea, then, I guess, that's 
another, albeit narrower, definition.  We don't argue about what 
symbiosis means because I think we've come to accept that there was an 
original, broad definition (sensu deBary) that is still useful 
intellectually and that allows the symbios list to hopefully reach 80 
subscribers.  But there's an equally useful (or more useful, perhaps) 
definition that implies commensalism to mutualism.  Endophytism can do 
the same.  When writing review articles and teaching, we need to clearly 
define what we mean by endophyte, but let's tend toward broadness of 
definition.  (I prefer: lower forms of plant life including fungi growing in 
higher plants).  Arkansas pasture farmers all have a certain definition 
in mind of the word endophyte, and a very narrow one at that.  I'm certainly 
not going to change it.
  Enjoy the abundant diversity and complexity of the English language.  
It is a difficult and dynamic language, and flexible.  Yesterday I was 
correctly exams, and I noticed a student's agonizing attempt at 
spelling.  He tried to spell the word drought.  He couldn't quite 
remember, so he figured he'd first find a word that rhymes with drought, 
and then modify it slightly.  Finally he came up with the word droubt.

Chuck West