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Seagrass-associated fungal communities show distance decay of similarity that has implications for seagrass management and restoration.

ABSTRACT: Marine fungal biodiversity remains vastly understudied, and even less is known of their biogeography and the processes responsible for driving these distributions in marine environments. We investigated the fungal communities associated with the seagrass Enhalus acoroides collected from Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia to test the hypothesis that fungal communities are homogeneous throughout the study area. Seagrass samples were separated into different structures (leaves, roots, and rhizomes), and a sediment sample was collected next to each plant. Amplicon sequencing of the fungal internal transcribed spacer 1 and subsequent analysis revealed significant differences in fungal communities collected from different locations and different structures. We show a significant pattern of distance decay, with samples collected close to each other having more similar fungal communities in comparison with those that are more distant, indicating dispersal limitations and/or differences in habitat type are contributing to the observed biogeographic patterns. These results add to our understanding of the seagrass ecosystem in an understudied region of the world that is also the global epicenter of seagrass diversity. This work has implications for seagrass management and conservation initiatives, and we recommend that fungal community composition be a consideration for any seagrass transplant or restoration programme.

SUBMITTER: Wainwright BJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6802368 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Seagrass-associated fungal communities show distance decay of similarity that has implications for seagrass management and restoration.

Wainwright Benjamin J BJ Zahn Geoffrey L GL Zushi Joshua J Lee Nicole Li Ying NLY Ooi Jillian Lean Sim JLS Lee Jen Nie JN Huang Danwei D

Ecology and evolution 20190915 19

Marine fungal biodiversity remains vastly understudied, and even less is known of their biogeography and the processes responsible for driving these distributions in marine environments. We investigated the fungal communities associated with the seagrass <i>Enhalus acoroides</i> collected from Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia to test the hypothesis that fungal communities are homogeneous throughout the study area. Seagrass samples were separated into different structures (leaves, roots, and rhi ...[more]

PMID: 31641473

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Project description:Bacteria and fungi are important mediators of biogeochemical processes and play essential roles in the establishment of plant communities, which makes knowledge about their recovery after extreme disturbances valuable for understanding ecosystem development. However, broad ecological differences between bacterial and fungal organisms, such as growth rates, stress tolerance, and substrate utilization, suggest they could follow distinct trajectories and show contrasting dynamics during recovery. In this study, we analyzed both the intra-annual variability and decade-scale recovery of bacterial and fungal communities in a chronosequence of reclaimed mined soils using next-generation sequencing to quantify their abundance, richness, ?-diversity, taxonomic composition, and cooccurrence network properties. Bacterial communities shifted gradually, with overlapping ?-diversity patterns across chronosequence ages, while shifts in fungal communities were more distinct among different ages. In addition, the magnitude of intra-annual variability in bacterial ?-diversity was comparable to the changes across decades of chronosequence age, while fungal communities changed minimally across months. Finally, the complexity of bacterial cooccurrence networks increased with chronosequence age, while fungal networks did not show clear age-related trends. We hypothesize that these contrasting dynamics of bacteria and fungi in the chronosequence result from (i) higher growth rates for bacteria, leading to higher intra-annual variability; (ii) higher tolerance to environmental changes for fungi; and (iii) stronger influence of vegetation on fungal communities.IMPORTANCE Both bacteria and fungi play essential roles in ecosystem functions, and information about their recovery after extreme disturbances is important for understanding whole-ecosystem development. Given their many differences in phenotype, phylogeny, and life history, a comparison of different bacterial and fungal recovery patterns improves the understanding of how different components of the soil microbiota respond to ecosystem recovery. In this study, we highlight key differences between soil bacteria and fungi during the restoration of reclaimed mine soils in the form of long-term diversity patterns, intra-annual variability, and potential interaction networks. Cooccurrence networks revealed increasingly complex bacterial community interactions during recovery, in contrast to much simpler and more isolated fungal network patterns. This study compares bacterial and fungal cooccurrence networks and reveals cooccurrences persisting through successional ages.

Dataset Information

Seagrass-associated fungal communities show distance decay of similarity that has implications for seagrass management and restoration.

Publications

Seagrass-associated fungal communities show distance decay of similarity that has implications for seagrass management and restoration.

Similar Datasets

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