Abstract
Lake Magadi and Little Magadi are saline, alkaline lakes lying in the southern part of Kenyan Rift Valley. Their solutes are supplied by a series of alkaline hot springs with temperatures as high as 86°C. Previous culture-dependent and independent studies have revealed diverse prokaryotic groups adapted to these conditions. However, very few studies have examined the diversity of fungi in these soda lakes. In this study, amplicons of Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region on Total Community DNA using Illumina sequencing were used to explore the fungal community composition within the hot springs. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were analyzed using QIIME 1.8.0, taxonomy assigned via BLASTn against SILVA 119 Database and hierarchical clustering was done using R programming software. A total of 334, 394 sequence reads were obtained from which, 151 OTUs were realized at 3% genetic distance. Taxonomic analysis revealed that 80.33% of the OTUs belonged to the Phylum Ascomycota, 11.48% Basidiomycota while the remaining consisted of Chytridiomycota, Glomeromycota and early diverging fungal lineages. The most abundant Ascomycota groups consisted of Aspergillus (18.75%), Stagonospora and Ramularia (6.25% each) in wet sediment at 83.6°C, while Penicillium and Trichocomaceae (14.29% each) were dominant in wet sediment at 45.1°C. The results revealed representatives of thermophilic and alkaliphilic fungi within the hot springs of Lake Magadi and Little Magadi. This suggests their ability to adapt to high alkalinity, temperature and salinity. Key words: Fungi, hot springs, temperature, DNA, diversity.
Highlights
Fungi have colonized diverse habitats such as tropical regions (Hawksworth, 1991), extreme environments such as deserts, areas with high salt concentrations (Vaupotic et al, 2008), ionizing radiation (Dadachova et al, 2007), deep sea sediments (Raghukumar and Raghukumar, 1998) and ocean hydrothermal areas (Le Calvez et al., 2009)
Wet sediment and water samples were randomly collected at three different locations in hot springs of Lake Magadi and Little Magadi
Temperature measurement showed a gradient from hot spring in the main Lake Magadi, with the springs at Little Magadi measuring between 81 and 83.6°C
Summary
Fungi have colonized diverse habitats such as tropical regions (Hawksworth, 1991), extreme environments such as deserts, areas with high salt concentrations (Vaupotic et al, 2008), ionizing radiation (Dadachova et al, 2007), deep sea sediments (Raghukumar and Raghukumar, 1998) and ocean hydrothermal areas (Le Calvez et al., 2009). Most fungi grow in terrestrial environments, though several species live partly or solely in aquatic habitats, such as the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a parasite that has been responsible for a worldwide decline in amphibian populations (Brem and Lips, 2008). While there are wellknown examples of bacteria that can grow in a variety of natural environments including hot springs and geysers where temperatures can reach 100°C, eukaryotes are much more sensitive because, above 65°C, their membranes become irreparably damaged (Magan and Aldred, 2007). Some Deuteromycetes isolated from thermal springs have maximum growth temperature of 61.5°C (Magan, 2006)
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