Nature Communications (Aug 2019)

Bis-naphthopyrone pigments protect filamentous ascomycetes from a wide range of predators

  • Yang Xu,
  • Maria Vinas,
  • Albatol Alsarrag,
  • Ling Su,
  • Katharina Pfohl,
  • Marko Rohlfs,
  • Wilhelm Schäfer,
  • Wei Chen,
  • Petr Karlovsky

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11377-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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It is thought that fungi protect themselves from predators by the production of toxic compounds. Here, Xu et al. show that a wide range of animal predators avoid feeding on Fusarium fungi, and this depends on fungal production of a bis-naphthopyrone pigment that is not toxic to the predators.