Mycorrhizal features and fungal partners of four mycoheterotrophic Monotropoideae (Ericaceae) species from Yunnan, China Shen Min & Zhang Chang-Qin & Ma Yong-Peng & Stephane Welti & Pierre-Arthur Moreau & Marc-André Selosse Received: 29 April 2012 / Accepted: 25 June 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract We provide a preliminary report of the mycobionts found within four Monotropoideae (Ericaceae) species from China: Monotropa uniflora, Hypopitys monotropa, Monotro- pastrum humile and Monotropastrum sciaphilum (a rare en- demic species never previously studied for mycorrhizae). Such achlorophyllous Monotropoideae plants obtain their carbohy- drates from mycorrhizal fungi linking them to surrounding trees, on which these fungi form ectomycorrhizae. Since Monotropoideae were rarely studied in continental Asia, the root systems of the four species sampled in Yunnan were examined using morphological and molecular methods. All the roots of these four species exhibit a typical monotropoid mycorrhizal morphology, including a fungal mantle, a Hartig net and hyphal pegs. In M. uniflora and M. humile mycorrhi- zae, cystidia typical of Russula symbionts covered the fungal mantle. ITS barcoding revealed that Russulales were the most frequent colonizers in all species, but Hypopitys monotropa displayed various additional mycorrhizal taxa. Moreover, a few additional ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic Basidiomycota taxa were identified in the three other species, challenging that these four Monotropoideae species are as strictly fungal spe- cific as the other Monotropoideae species hitherto studied. Moreover, a comparison with accompanying fungus sporo- carps revealed that the fruiting fungal community significantly differed from that associated with the Monotropoideae roots, so that a clear fungal preference was evident. Finally, four fungal species were found on more than one Monotropoideae species: this contrasted with previous reports of sympatrically growing mycoheterotrophic plants, which did not reveal any overlap. This again challenges the idea of strict fungal specificity. Keywords Hypopitys . Laccaria . Monotropa . Monotropastrum . Mycoheterorophy . Mycorrhizal specificity . Russulales 1 Introduction Over 400 achlorophyllous plant species receive carbon nutri- tion from their mycorrhizal fungi, in a form of heterotrophy called ‘mycoheterotrophy’ (MH) (Leake 1994; Leake et al. 2004; Smith and Read 2008) and have attracted considerable research in the two last centuries (Selosse et al. 2011). In the Ericaceae family, MH species occur in the subfamily Mono- tropoideae (Leake 1994; Leake et al. 2004; Tsukaya et al. 2008) that is divided into three tribes (Kron et al. 2002): Monotropeae and Pterosporeae encompass fully MH species, while Pyroleae Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13199-012-0180-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. S. Min : Z. Chang-Qin (*) : M. Yong-Peng Kunming Botanic Garden, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, China e-mail: zhangchangqin@mail.kib.ac.cn S. Min e-mail: shenmin@mail.kib.ac.cn S. Min Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China S. Min Key Laboratory of Resource Plants and Biotechnology, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, China S. Welti : P.-A. Moreau Laboratoire de Botanique, Faculté des Sciences Pharmaceutiques et Biologiques, BP 83, 59006 Lille cedex, France M.-A. Selosse Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, UMR 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier cedex 5, France Symbiosis DOI 10.1007/s13199-012-0180-4