Distinct Microbial Community of Phyllosphere Associated with Five Tropical Plants on Yongxing Island, South China Sea

Zheng

et al. 2022

Preprint

Background Deciphering the local diversity and community assembly of plant-associated microorganisms is crucial to better predict the ecological functioning in forest ecosystems. The differences in microbial diversity and community assembly pattern between plant aboveground and belowground compartments, however, are less documented. Here, we examined the bacterial communities in the leaf- (endophytic and epiphytic) and root- (root and rhizospheric soil) associated habitats of 13 tree species in a subtropical forest ecosystem. Results The bacterial α-diversity (phylotype richness) substantially differed across the four habitats, with the highest and lowest values observed in soil and leaf endophytic compartments, respectively. The variations of α-diversity amongst the 13 tree species were more obvious in leaf endophytic and epiphytic habitats than in their corresponding roots and soils. The bacterial community compositions were different across the four habitats and were significantly more divergent in leaf- than in root-associated habitats. Moreover, deterministic processes dominated the endophytic and epiphytic community assembly, whereas stochastic processes primarily affected community assembly in root and rhizospheric soils. Leaf nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and soil pH were the main factors influencing leaf- and root-related community compositions, respectively. Conclusions This study highlights the contrasting diversity and community assembly patterns between leaf- and root-inhabiting bacteria. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the maintenance mechanisms of microbial diversity in the subtropical forest ecosystem.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting diversity and community assembly of leaf- and root-associated bacterial communities from 13 tree species in a subtropical forest

Zheng

et al. 2022

Preprint

“…In this study, we found that plant compartment exerted a signi cant effect on bacterial diversity, with the highest and lowest values observed in rhizospheric soil and leaf habitats, respectively. Previous studies demonstrated that higher bacterial diversities were observed in soil compared with root endophytic and phyllospheric compartments of various plants (e.g., Bao et al 2019;Sun et al 2021), mostly due to the more complex heterogeneity and broad niches of soil circumstance. However, we surprisingly found that the leaf-associated bacteria showed equally high OTU richness as the root, indicating that the relatively high bacterial diversity inhabiting on the leaf surface of subtropical tree species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting diversity and community composition of leaf- and root-associated bacterial communities from 13 tree species in a subtropical forest

Zheng

et al. 2022

Preprint

Deciphering the local diversity and community composition of plant-associated microorganisms is crucial to predict the ecological functioning in forest ecosystems. The differences in microbial diversity and community composition between tree’s aboveground and belowground compartments remain largely unknown. Here we examined the bacterial communities in the leaf surface and root-associated (root and rhizospheric soil) habitats of 13 tree species. The bacterial richness substantially differed across the three habitats, with the highest value observed in soil compartment. The variations of α-diversity (richness and diversity indices) amongst the 13 tree species were more obvious in leaf and soil habitats than in their corresponding roots. The community compositions were different across habitats and were significantly more divergent in leaf- than in root-associated habitats. Leaf nutrients and soil pH and NH4+-N were main factors influencing leaf- and root-related community compositions, respectively. This study highlights the contrasting diversity and community composition between leaf- and root-inhabiting bacteria. Our findings would improve understanding of the effect of compartments and tree identity on microbial diversity in the subtropical forest.

“…In recent studies, the use of the two ITS regions has been quite inconsistent. While some used ITS2 as the universal fungal barcode (Bao et al 2019;Beng Fig. 4 Heatmap of the most common taxa based on their consistency in North-eastern Brazil Caatinga leaves (BC) and sap-feeding insects (BC*), Northeastern Brazil Tropical Rainforest (BR), Europe alpine zone (EA), and Central Europe colline zone (EC) samples.…”

Section: Applied Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) versus the recent use of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) is also inconsistent. Although there are recommendations to use only ASVs (Callahan et al 2017), resulting in a reduction in the number of dominant species (Egidi et al 2019), many of the current studies are still based on OTUs (Bao et al 2019;Beng and Corlett 2019;Beule et al 2019;Checinska Sielaff et al 2019;Epstein et al 2019;Janakiev et al 2019;Lynikiene et al 2020;Morales-Rodriguez et al 2019;Nerva et al 2019;Pan et al 2019;Qian et al 2020;Ricks and Koide 2019;Saravesi et al 2019;Wilkinson et al 2019;Würth et al 2019;Yao et al 2019;Zhang et al 2019), but others rely on ASVs (Del Frari et al 2019;Egidi et al 2019;Li et al 2019), or OTUs generated from ASVs (Ezeokoli et al 2020), and even OTUs from cultivationbased Sanger sequencing are still in use (Janowsky et al 2019). With the availability of the VSEARCH tool within the QIIME2 pipeline, allowing the easy aggregation of OTUs from ASVs, the Illumina sequencing datasets in this Fig.…”

Section: Applied Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative analyses of sooty mould communities from Brazil and Central Europe

et al. 2021

To gain an insight into fungal sooty mould communities on leaves of trees and shrubs in the tropics and in temperate regions, 47 biofilms of the Mata Atlântica rainforest relic and the Caatinga vegetation in the state of Sergipe, Northeast Brazil, and from Central European colline and alpine zones were compared. The four sampling sites clearly differed in composition of their epiphyllous fungal communities. The fungal OTUs from all sites belonged mainly to the Ascomycota, with Dothideomycetes being the dominant class. The core community group consisted of a few site-specific representatives in co-occurrence with the ubiquitous Mycosphaerella tassiana and Aureobasidium pullulans. Most species of the core community were dark pigmented and were accompanied by facultative unpigmented or lightly pigmented species. Among the cultivable fungal species, the proportion of melanised species was significantly more abundant in samples from the two European sites, which supports the theory of thermal melanism. The identity of the host plant had a stronger impact on fungal community composition than the presence of sap-feeding insects.