Unseen fungal biodiversity and complex inter- organismal interactions in Protea flower heads

A unique microbiome occurs within the flower heads of various Protea species endemic to Africa. These include two lineages of ophiostomatoid fungi, Knoxdaviesia (Microascales) and Sporothrix (Ophiostomatales), that have members occurring exclusively in this environ-ment and that rely on mites as their primary mode of spore dissemination. The mites, in turn, attach to the bodies of Protea-pollinating beetles and the beaks and bodies of birds for long-distance movement, establishing a hierarchical dispersal network for the ophios-tomatoid fungi. This inter-organismal network is highly successful, achieving fungal dispersal over vast distances. Multiple species of fungi, mites and bacteria have been described from this unique niche over the past four decades. The intricacies of their sym-biotic interactions continue to be unravelled. This review covers all current knowledge of the "distinctly African" Protea-ophiostomatoid fungus environment and illustrates the depth of a fascinating unseen fungal biodiversity niche. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of British Mycological Society. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).