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    STUDIA BIOLOGIA - Issue no. 1 / 2019  
         
  Article:   ON GENERALISTS AND SPECIALISTS AMONG HALOTOLERANT FUNGI.

Authors:  CENE GOSTINČAR, XIAOHUAN SUN, JANJA ZAJC, POLONA ZALAR, MARTINA TURK, JERNEJA ZUPANČIČ, YUCHONG TANG, CHAO FANG, YONGLUN LUO, ZEWEI SONG, NINA GUNDE-CIMERMAN. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  Among the most frequently isolated halotolerant fungi is Aureobasidium pullulans, a species found in habitats as different as hypersaline water in the tropics and glacial ice of the polar regions. It is not only halotolerant, but polyextremotolerant, highly adaptable and nutritionally versatile. How can a species thrive in hypersaline water, but also survive conditions inside the Arctic glacier, on plant surface, in house dust and in other habitats? Or do generalist species in fact always harbour cryptic specialists, undetected by traditional phylogenetic studies, as indicated by some studies? We sequenced whole genomes of fifty strains of the black yeast Aureobasidium pullulans isolated from various habitats worldwide, as well as fifty genomes of Aureobasidium melanogenum and fifteen strains of Aureobasidium subglaciale. The genomes shared a relatively high degree of intraspecific variability. Nevertheless, the genomes of A. pullulans for example contained a redundancy of alkali metal cation transporters and this redundancy was highly conserved between the strains. Habitat generalists and habitat specialists differed in terms of the amount of genomic recombination and the existence of genetically defined subpopulations in the species. Certain fungi appear to be true generalists, with strains from a single recombining population inhabiting diverse habitats with no signs of specialisation for each of these habitats on the genomic level, while other, closely related species employ much more specialised ecological strategies.

Keywords: comparative genomics, fungi, generalists, population genomics 		 
         
     
         
         
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