Diversity of saprophytic fungi in the rhizoplane of plant communities naturally recolonizing oil ponds in the Amazonian areas

Oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazonian hyper diverse rain forest is one of the major environmental liabilities inherited from the 70ies and represents a major threat to the local biodiversity. In the Ecuadorian rain forest, the most emblematic pollutions are the “oil ponds”. These “oil ponds” were dug in the forest and filled by bad quality crude oil, then left over by the oil industries. Over time, these ponds were covered by organic debris fallen form the neighboring canopy, accumulating and forming a floating mat of organic matter. This organic, compost-like matter, progressively, were colonized by plants, mostly herbaceous species, which root system plunging into the crude oil. We aimed to evaluate the diversity of the root endophytic and saprotrophic rhizoplane fungi in these plants. A total of 1077 strains have been obtained from 208 herbaceous plants. For a more depth taxonomic studies, the Consolidated Species Concept (CSC) was applied as result of this study, several undescribed species were addressed. Our results suggested that fungal diversity and many novel taxa could emerge from little explored environments. A second objective was to assess with a preliminary in-vitro procedure the ability of the fungal strains to grow in presence of and to degrade oil molecule (hydrocarbons), our results showed that several genera shown some level of tolerance, in solid medium, and also presented the ability to use hydrocarbon in liquid medium. In this study the removal ratio of TPHs achieve by T. atroviride MUCL 54742, D. abundans MUCL 54589, and M. irregularis MUCL 54578 reflected significantly higher degradation activity.(AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 201