Subject: Definition of endophyte

From: "Charles P. West" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 09:43:45 -0600 (CST)

I thought I would bring to the attention of this group a recent paper 
that may interest endophyte workers:
Wennstrom, Anders.  1994.  Endophyte - the misuse of an old term.  Oikos 
71:535-534.

The authors raise some provocative questions about this field, and I feel 
that this mail group may be a proper forum for discussing the points 
brought up in this short paper.  The author notes that some other authors 
have defined endophyte differently from the original definition, the 
original being "an organism that lives in another organism."  This is 
pretty general (animals are organisms, aren't they?), and recent writers 
have attemped to narrow the definition to fungi living asymptomatically 
within plants, etc.  Wennstrom recommends sticking with the original 
general definition and adding information on "the life cycle of the 
fungus, whether it is perennial or annual, systemic or non-systemic, 
andwhether it is living asymptomatically or not."

I would appreciate it if other endophyters would read the article and 
express their opinions.  Is this an issue or was Wennstrom making an 
issue out of a nonissue?
Thanks.

Chuck West
University of Arkansas
276 Altheimer Dr.
Fayetteville AR  72704-6804
501-575-3982
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 12:17:19 -0600 (CST)

> Wennstrom, Anders.  1994.  Endophyte - the misuse of an old term.  Oikos 

I have not yet read this article but I am inclined to agree with the 
author.  We have tried to limit the term endophyte to fungi that occur 
asymptomatically within plants (typical is the tall fescue endophyte--A. 
coenophialum).  An examination of the word endophyte in The Collegiate 
Dictionary of Botany (by D. Swartz) gives the following definition: A 
plant which grows within another plant upon which it may or may not be 
parasitic.  And the word endophytic is: Living in cavities of other 
plants. The term endozoophyte gives: An organism living in animals, 
frequently a pathogen.  While these definitions do not exactly match 
those of Wennstrom (1994) they are similarly broad.  

Many of the fungi in the Clavicipitaceae possess mycelium that is clearly 
endophytic for most of the life cycle.  However, for sexual reproduction 
the fungus emerges from the plant and reproduces on the surface.  There 
are biologists that contend that these species are not 'true 
endophytes'.  I contend that if part of the life cycle occurrs in the 
intercellular spaces of a living plant then the endosymbiont is an 
endophyte.  This definition holds for fungi, missletoes, or any other 
endosymbiotic group.

In my opinion the terminology/vocabulary problem is probably one of the 
biggest problems we have as regards to the biology of symbiosis.