UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS DEPARTAMENTO DE BIOLOGIA VEGETAL Palm leaf fungi in Portugal: ecological, morphological and phylogenetic approaches Diogo Rafael Santos Pereira Mestrado em Microbiologia Aplicada Dissertação orientada por: Alan John Lander Phillips Rogério Paulo de Andrade Tenreiro 2019 This Dissertation was fully performed at Lab Bugworkers | M&B-BioISI, Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute, under the direct supervision of Principal Investigator Alan John Lander Phillips Professor Rogério Paulo de Andrade Tenreiro was the internal supervisor designated in the scope of the Master in Applied Microbiology of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon To my grandpa, our little old man Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and commitment of all the people (direct or indirectly) involved and to whom I sincerely thank. Firstly, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Alan Phillips, for all his dedication, motivation and enthusiasm throughout this long year. I am grateful for always push me to my limits, squeeze the best from my interest in Mycology and letting me explore a new world of concepts and ideas. Your expertise, attentiveness and endless patience pushed me to be a better investigator, and hopefully a better mycologist. You made my MSc dissertation year be beyond better than everything I would expect it to be. Most of all, I want to thank you for believing in me as someone who would be able to achieve certain goals, even when I doubt it, and for guiding me towards them. Thank you for always teaching me, above all, to make the right question with the care and accuracy that Mycology demands, which is probably the most important lesson I have acquired from this dissertation year. Once you told me that “there’s more to Mycology than looking at fungi” and after a year I can truly understand the depth of this simple quote. My truthful gratitude. I would also like to thank my forever teacher, Professor Rogério Tenreiro, who has the mindset and the essence of a genius. Thank you for believing in me and presenting me to this incredible opportunity and challenge. Most of all, I want to thank you for your constant guidance, precious help, endless availability, enthusiastic encouragement and everyday support. Thank you for all the time you spent helping whenever I needed, with outside of the box ideas that pushed me to go beyond my expectations. My gratefulness extends beyond this past year, for continually and convincingly conveyed me a spirit of scientific curiosity regarding research and scholarship. Your excitement and brilliance regarding teaching was what made me choose Microbiology many years ago and I will certainly never forget it. To Professor Margarida Barata, my very first Mycology teacher. I am forever grateful for all the teachings and guidance that led me to where I am today. They had a very important role in my first steps in the Mycology world and were part of the reasons why this project exists. Thank you for your concern and interest during this year, and for your kind words when I felt lost in the very beginning. To Professor Ana Tenreiro for all the sympathy and care. They were much appreciated on the most stressful times and undoubtedly have helped me to take on the burden of writing. Thank you also for all the fungus cultures wasted from classes that stimulated my curiosity throughout the year and let me spend a bit of time away from dissertation routine. Most of all, thank you for the “helping horses” … I still believe they made my fingerprintings work! To Professor Lisete Fernandes, my solemn conscience between the corridors and the tables of Tec Labs. Thank you for the non-stop debates about meticulous details that turned out to be important steps in the development of my work. Your interest, ideas and suggestions, along with our endless conversations beyond the scope of this dissertation, also made this year special. To Professor Baptista Ferreira, thank you for the plethora of literature that I had the pleasure to access, besides the unceasing willingness whenever I asked you to teach me a part of Mycology that seems not to find a place in nowadays classes. Also, thank you for the precious help concerning microtome and cuts, which showed me an unknown micra-reality of elements and shapes. To CLO Filipa Silva, our lifesaver inside the lab. Thank you for assuring the lab’s order and for attending my needs whenever I asked. I am also thankful for the unending advices, the precious pep-talks, the motivation and concern and, most of all, the share of life experiences. v To Professor Lélia Chambel. Thank you for the availability when I needed help and for listening to my concerns throughout this project. I wouldn't trust anyone better to clarify the meticulous details involved in dissertation writing. Thank you so much. I also thank to Professor Manuela Carolino, one of the most human, empathic and supportive people I have had the privilege of meeting. I will never forget your gentle conversations and motivational inputs. To my Bugworkers colleagues and friends, who have endured my bad mood and temper this past year, I owe a huge and special thank you. This would not have been possible without all your care and support, particularly when the days and routine became harsh… and it would certainly have been much harder without our infinite writing sessions in the basement… To Aladin Medi. Thank you for the company and for teaching me lessons that go way beyond the lab. It was the first time I felt that someone understood this weird passion concerning fungi. The mutual pep-talks while we were drinking café will be forever remembered. To Joana Jesus. Thank you for being present throughout these years, to the long nights of study for exams and now… to the long days extracting DNA. Thank you for being there and creating the space for a perfect teamwork in the lab. But most of all, thank you for never stop trying to make me laugh with our inside jokes. To Maria Matias. Thank you for the advices, the constant suggestions and the precious corrections concerning my bad english. Thank you for the (almost endless) patience to my inopportune and incessant questions. But most of all, thank you for sharing your journey with me, it was an inspiration and an example of persistence and endurance. Working with you has been an enriching challenge, especially because of yours appreciated willingness to help. I am grateful to you. To Sara Cabeça. Thank you for being my partner from the South Pole Lab, or as we know it… “our” lab. Thank you for your presence ‘till late night and weekends, everyday company and thoughtful patience throughout this year. Even though we agree to disagree in several points of view, you made everything a little easier. Thank you above all for motivating and believing in me… I won’t forget it. To Francisca Moreira. Thank you for all the precious help! You were my everyday sidekick… always there for me from the very beginning. Thank you for never leaving my side from the tedious gels and painful pipetting to the restful cappuccino and morning hugs. Words are not enough to express everything you did for me and how much you have made this dissertation seem easier. I am forever grateful. To my Telma Costa. This is just another road of our journey and I am so grateful that we have been able to cross it together… again. I could not have done it otherwise. Thank you for your love and support, even when my mood wasn’t the best to stay around. Thank you for validating me every day and for making me feel special as no one else can. Thank you for the right words whenever my head was not able to think right and was overloaded with my constant unsatisfaction. Thank you for never giving up motivating me and showing me that I was capable of it. This dissertation is ours. Obrigado. Last, but definitely not least, to my family, who set me off on the road to this dissertation a long time ago. I simply couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you for all the love and support you have shown me through this year… the priceless patience… the valuable encouragement… and for always being around when I needed the most. I have no words. You have been my safe place, allowing me to grow and learn, and believing in me above all. I will now (finally) clean my bedroom as promised! In my grandpa’s memory, José Manuel da Cruz dos Santos, who I know would have been very proud to see me achieve another milestone. vi Abstract Palm trees (Arecaceae) are a diverse group of monocotyledons distributed across the tropics. Some members of this family are economically important crops and others are highly prized as ornamentals, particularly in Mediterranean climates. Anything that diminishes palm attractiveness, such as foliar lesions, will have a negative impact in their aesthetic value. In the last 30 years there has been a profusion of studies on palm fungi, a taxonomically diverse and important community. Although most of these studies used a descriptive taxonomy approach, from which many species and genera were formally identified and described as new to science, only some of these studies were focused on biodiversity and/or ecology. Considering that palm trees are a plant model for studying fungal diversity, and that fungi are one of the main causes of palm foliar lesions, a preliminary assessment of the fungal assemblage on palms was carried out.