Life on the Rocks: First Insights Into the Microbiota of the Threatened Aquatic Rheophyte Hanseniella heterophylla

Abstract

Little is known about microbial communities of aquatic plants despite their crucial ecosystem function in aquatic ecosystems. Here, we analyzed the microbiota of an aquatic rheophyte, Hanseniella heterophylla, growing at three areas differing in their degree of anthropogenic disturbance in Thailand employing a metabarcoding approach. Our results show that diverse taxonomic and functional groups of microbes colonize H. heterophylla. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Dothideomycetes, and Sordariomycetes form the backbone of the microbiota. Surprisingly, the beneficial microbes reported from plant microbiomes in terrestrial habitats, such as N-fixing bacteria and ectomycorrhizal fungi, were also frequently detected. We showed that biofilms for attachment of H. heterophylla plants to rocks may associate with diverse cyanobacteria (distributed in eight families, including Chroococcidiopsaceae, Coleofasciculaceae, Leptolyngbyaceae, Microcystaceae, Nostocaceae, Phormidiaceae, Synechococcaceae, and Xenococcaceae) and other rock biofilm-forming bacteria (mainly Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Flavobacterium). We found distinct community compositions of both bacteria and fungi at high and low anthropogenic disturbance levels regardless of the study areas. In the highly disturbed area, we found strong enrichment of Gammaproteobacteria and Tremellomycetes coupled with significant decline of total bacterial OTU richness. Bacteria involved with sulfamethoxazole (antibiotic) degradation and human pathogenic fungi (Candida, Cryptococcus, Trichosporon, and Rhodotorula) were exclusively detected as indicator microorganisms in H. heterophylla microbiota growing in a highly disturbed area, which can pose a major threat to human health. We conclude that aquatic plant microbiota are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance. Our results also unravel the potential use of this plant as biological indicators in remediation or treatment of such disturbed ecosystems.

Lithic bacterial communities: ecological aspects focusing onTintenstrich communities

“…Therefore, DNA was extracted from the whole rock surface. A similar result was observed by Purahong et al [43] , who showed that cyanobacteria diversity was negatively affected in highly disturbed areas. Chloroflexi, instead, are known to be involved in the formation of matrixes that allow the aggregation of external material and it is more likely that they form on a more stable substrate [44] .…”

FungalTraits vs. FUNGuild: Comparison of Ecological Functional Assignments of Leaf- and Needle-Associated Fungi Across 12 Temperate Tree Species

“…The average value of percent functional assignment of FUNGuild is 43% (ranging from 38-46%). These values are consistent with the percentage points of functional assignment of FUNGuild reported before in many publications [39,46,47]. Nevertheless, it is known that the percentage points of functional assignments of taxonomically dependent functional annotation tool highly depends on the quality and quantity of the database backbone of each sequence data, taxonomic identification and functional description [48].…”

The Distribution and Influencing Factors of Hypolithic Microbial Communities in the Hexi Corridor

“…R was used to examine microbial alpha diversity (Veen Diagram package). Utilizing Mothur [ 40 ] 1.30.2, OTU Venn analyses of several biomes were conducted. The beta diversity distances were calculated using QIIME 1.9.1, and pairwise categorical distance matrices between bacterial communities were analyzed using the Bray–Curtis method.…”