The skin microbiome of the common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus) has low taxonomic and gene function β‐diversity

Abstract

Summary The health of sharks, like all organisms, is linked to their microbiome. At the skin interface, sharks have dermal denticles that protrude above the mucus, which may affect the types of microbes that occur here. We characterized the microbiome from the skin of the common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus) to investigate the structure and composition of the skin microbiome. On average 618 812 (80.9% ± S.D. 0.44%) reads per metagenomic library contained open reading frames; of those, between 7.6% and 12.8% matched known protein sequences. Genera distinguishing the A. vulpinus microbiome from the water column included, Pseudoalteromonas (12.8% ± 4.7 of sequences), Erythrobacter (5. 3% ± 0.5) and Idiomarina (4.2% ± 1.2) and distinguishing gene pathways included, cobalt, zinc and cadmium resistance (2.2% ± 0.1); iron acquisition (1.2% ± 0.1) and ton/tol transport (1.3% ± 0.08). Taxonomic community overlap (100 – dissimilarity index) was greater in the skin microbiome (77.6), relative to the water column microbiome (70.6) and a reference host‐associated microbiome (algae: 71.5). We conclude the A. vulpinus skin microbiome is influenced by filtering processes, including biochemical and biophysical components of the shark skin and result in a structured microbiome.

Characterization of the skin and gill microbiomes of the farmed seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and seabream (Sparus aurata)

“…Proteobacteria is the most common phylum reported in the skin and gill microbiomes of teleosts (see for example the review by Llewellyn et al, 2014), including the skin microbiome of seabass and seabream (Chiarello et al, 2015;Pimentel et al, 2017;Tapia-Paniagua et al, 2018). A predominance of the phylum Bacteroidetes has also been previously reported in seabass and seabream (Chiarello et al, 2015;Tapia-Paniagua et al, 2018), as well as in the skin of many other fishes, such as in the brook char , rainbow trout (Lowrey et al, 2015), channel catfish (Larsen et al, 2014), tambaqui (Sylvain et al, 2016), among others (see Doane et al, 2017;Larsen et al, 2013;Larsen et al, 2015;Legrand et al, 2018;Leonard et al, 2014). The gill microbiome of the bluefin tuna (Valdenegro-Ve g a et al, 2013), rainbow trout (Lowrey et al, 2015) and yellowtail kingfish (Legrand et al, 2018) were also found to be dominated by Bacteroidetes.…”

An Economical Custom-Built Drone for Assessing Whale Health

“…It may be possible that bacteria found on whale skin also occur within the respiratory tract or epithelial cells. Tenacibaculum has been associated with the microbiome of other marine species such as southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii castelnau) (Valdenegro-Vega et al, 2013), while Psychrobacter is part of the thresher shark and rainbow trout skin microbiome (Lowrey et al, 2015;Doane et al, 2017).…”

Similar bacterial communities on healthy and injured skin of black tip reef sharks

“…The bacterial community of black-tip reef shark skin investigated in the present study was comprised of a combination of several bacterial genera previously identified to be characteristic of shark skin [27], as well as bacterial taxa common in a range of marine organisms and environments [40][41][42][43]. Bacteria previously reported characteristic of the thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus) skin microbiome, but absent in corresponding seawater samples were Erythrobacter, Idiomarina, Marinobacter, and Pseudoalteromonas [27]. Shotgun sequencing suggested these bacteria harbor potentially important functions, including the synthesis of photosynthate (Erythrobacter), heavy metal detoxification (Idiomarina), and lipopolysaccharide degradation (Marinobacter), the latter of which may mediate and reduce host inflammatory responses [27,44].…”

“…Skin acts as a physical barrier to the surrounding environment, protecting against invasion by foreign substances and pathogens [26,30]. Skin microbiomes are shaped in part by properties, such as topographical location, endogenous host factors, and exogenous environmental factors [27,28,58]. Skin insults, including injury, lesions, inflammation, infection, or disease, are commonly associated with microbiome shifts [31][32][33]35].…”