Abstract
Fungi in the marine environment are often neglected as a research topic, despite that fungi having critical roles on land as decomposers, pathogens or endophytes. Here we used culture-dependent methods to survey the fungi associated with the seagrass, Zostera marina, also obtaining bacteria and oomycete isolates in the process. A total of 108 fungi, 40 bacteria and 2 oomycetes were isolated. These isolates were then taxonomically identified using a combination of molecular and phylogenetic methods. The majority of the fungal isolates were classified as belonging to the classes Eurotiomycetes, Dothideomycetes, and Sordariomycetes. Most fungal isolates were habitat generalists like Penicillium sp. and Cladosporium sp., but we also cultured a diverse set of rare taxa including possible habitat specialists like Colletotrichum sp. which may preferentially associate with Z. marina leaf tissue. Although the bulk of bacterial isolates were identified as being from known ubiquitous marine lineages, we also obtained several Actinomycetes isolates and a Phyllobacterium sp. We identified two oomycetes, another understudied group of marine microbial eukaryotes, as Halophytophthora sp. which may be opportunistic pathogens or saprophytes of Z. marina. Overall, this study generates a culture collection of fungi which adds to knowledge of Z. marina associated fungi and highlights a need for more investigation into the functional and evolutionary roles of microbial eukaryotes associated with seagrasses.
Highlights
Despite their global importance in terrestrial systems, the diversity, function, evolution, and global importance of fungi in the marine environment remains understudied
We placed this fungal collection in the phylogenetic context of isolates obtained from other seagrass surveys and found that only habitat generalists were isolated in association with multiple species
We compared the composition of this fungal collection to high throughput sequencing results of the fungal community associated with Z. marina from Ettinger & Eisen [43] and found that taxa isolated here were generally present in the sequencing data, but that they were not prevalent, with the exception of the Glomerellales (e.g. Colletotrichum sp.) on the leaves
Summary
Despite their global importance in terrestrial systems, the diversity, function, evolution, and global importance of fungi in the marine environment remains understudied. There are only *1100 currently accepted species of marine fungi despite estimates that true diversity is much higher, at 10,000 or more species [1, 2]. It is well known that fungi play vital roles in land plant health and fitness (e.g. as pathogens or endophytes), and much less is known about fungi in aquatic ecosystems, it is thought they have important roles in organic matter degradation and food web dynamics [3]. It is likely that fungi engage in vital functional roles when associated with marine plants, like seagrasses.
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