Diversity of culturable filamentous Ascomycetes in the eastern South Pacific Ocean off Chile

Abstract

Our study reports the diversity of culturable mycoplankton in the eastern South Pacific Ocean off Chile to contribute with novel knowledge on taxonomy of filamentous fungi isolated from distinct physicochemical and biological marine environments. We characterized spatial distribution of isolates, evaluated their viability and assessed the influence of organic substrate availability on fungal development. Thirty-nine Operational Taxonomic Units were identified from 99 fungal strains isolated from coastal and oceanic waters by using Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery. All Operational Taxonomic Units belonged to phylum Ascomycota and orders Eurotiales, Dothideales, Sordariales and Hypocreales, mainly Penicillium sp. (82%); 11 sequences did not match existing species in GenBank, suggesting occurrence of novel fungal taxa. Our results suggest that fungal communities in the South Pacific Ocean off Chile appear to thrive in a wide range of environmental conditions in the ocean and that substrate availability may be a factor influencing fungal viability in the ocean.

Biochemical fingerprints of marine fungi: implications for trophic and biogeochemical studies

“…Our results are consistent with previous findings showing wide representation of the genus Penicillium in isolates from waters of coastal and oceanic regions off Chile (Vera et al 2017), and a high diversity of culturable (Vera et al 2017) and ambient ) taxa off the coast of central Chile, likely associated with the high degree of heterogeneity of this environment. Rhodotorula yeasts frequently appear in marine samples (e.g.…”

“…Isolation of fungi, DNA extraction and amplification are described in Vera et al (2017), and are based on White et al (1990) and Gardes & Bruns (1993). PCR products, including ITS 1, 5.8 S and ITS 2 re gions, were sequenced using the Automated DNA Sequencing Service of MACROGEN (http:// dna.…”

“…To date, published information on the diversity of marine fungi is scarce (e.g. Richards et al 2012, Amend et al 2019) and in our study area in the eastern South Pacific Ocean, prior studies have been restricted to the culturable ascomycetes (Vera et al 2017) which cannot be considered representative of environmental diversity in this area. However, the selected strains in the present study did include several isolates identified as Penicillium sp., which were the predominant taxa in prior work (Vera et al 2017).…”

“…The variety of environments found in these large Pacific Ocean ecosystems supports different communities of microorganisms (e.g. Quiñones et al 2009, Ulloa et al 2012, Gutiérrez et al 2018, including fungi , Vera et al 2017). The study is therefore expected to provide a wide range of variability in fungal diversity and, thus, in their elemental and biochemical composition.…”

Production of Biosurfactants by Ascomycetes

“…Ascomycetes are abundant in the soil, but can also be found in aquatic environments and in plants as several of them are phytopathogens [39,40]. Egidi et al [40] identified patterns and ecological drivers of dominant soil fungal taxa occurring in the Ascomycota phylum.…”