Abundant and Rare Taxa of Planktonic Fungal Community Exhibit Distinct Assembly Patterns Along Coastal Eutrophication Gradient

Abstract

Revealing planktonic fungal ecology under coastal eutrophication is crucial to our understanding of microbial community shift in marine pollution background. We investigated the diversity, putative interspecies interactions, assembly processes and environmental responses of abundant and rare planktonic fungal communities along a eutrophication gradient present in the Beibu Gulf. The results showed that Dothideomycetes and Agaricomycetes were the predominant classes of abundant and rare fungi, respectively. We found that eutrophication significantly altered the planktonic fungal communities and affected the abundant taxa more than the rare taxa. The abundant and rare taxa were keystone members in the co-occurrence networks, and their interaction was enhanced with increasing nutrient concentrations. Stochastic processes dominated the community assembly of both abundant and rare planktonic fungi across the eutrophication gradient. Heterogeneous selection affected abundant taxa more than rare taxa, whereas homogenizing dispersal had a greater influence on rare taxa. Influences of environmental factors involving selection processes were detected, we found that abundant fungi were mainly influenced by carbon compounds, whereas rare taxa were simultaneously affected by carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus compounds in the Beibu Gulf. Overall, these findings highlight the distinct ecological adaptations of abundant and rare fungal communities to marine eutrophication.

The putative maintaining mechanism of gut bacterial ecosystem in giant pandas and its potential application in conservation

“…Some methods have been proposed to classify abundant and rare taxa in previous studies (Chen & Wen, 2021 ; Du et al, 2020 ; Xue et al, 2018 ). Here, we defined abundant and rare taxa based on their relative abundance, with 0.01% and 0.1% as the relative abundance thresholds for rare taxa (relative abundance <0.01%), abundant taxa (relative abundance >0.1%), and moderate taxa (0.1% ≥ relative abundance ≥0.01%) (Zhang, Yao, et al, 2021 ; Zhao et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Furthermore, a high number of nodes and edges reflects high complexity (Chen & Wen, 2021). Highly connected and complex microbial networks may contribute to community stability and better environmental resource utilization and provide higher functional redundancy for the host, enabling it to adapt better to the environment (Morriën et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2022). In this study, the co-occurrence network of wild giant pandas also contained more nodes and edges, which indicates Different microorganisms can form complex networks by interacting with each other (Faust & Raes, 2012;Xue et al, 2018), thereby affecting their distribution and function in the ecosystem (Chen & Wen, 2021;Du et al, 2020).…”

Planktonic Marine Fungi: A Review

“…For sampling of seawater, small sterile bottles, tubes, bags or buckets (H. Zhao et al., 2023) are common containers that have been used for near shore locations. Van Dorn bottles can also be used for sampling after proper washing before use (Kimura et al., 1999).…”

“…Moreover, eutrophication has an impact on the assembly and composition of the most abundant fungal taxa along a eutrophication gradient. After environmental disturbance, however, assembly mechanisms and adaption strategies differed between abundant and rare fungal taxa (H. Zhao et al., 2023). This study also highlighted the essential role of rare taxa in fungal community structure, stability, and diversity in coastal waters.…”

Linking root-associated fungal communities, wheat evolutionary patterns, and productivity: overlooked roles of rare taxa

“…True biological sequences of reads, known as amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), were inferred from Illumina sequence data by DADA2 software (Callahan et al 2016). Considering all samples collectively, ASVs were categorized into 'abundant taxa' if their average relative abundances were greater than 0.1%, 'rare taxa' if under 0.01%, and 'moderate taxa' between 0.01-0.1% across all samples (Jiao and Lu 2020; Zhao et al 2023). ASVs with a consistent presence in 80% of the samples among all varieties were de ned as the core taxa and the rest were non-core taxa according to the presence/absence-based approach (Neu et al 2021;Zheng et al 2021b).…”