Abstract
The fungal communities of mangrove sediments have wide ecological significance and are actively involved in nutrient recycling, decomposition of litter and degradation of recalcitrant substances. The present study focused on comparing the abundance, diversity and composition of fungal community in the sediments of two selected mangrove ecosystems of Kannur and Eranakulam districts of Kerala. Metagenomic analysis of the total sediment DNA was performed on an Illumina sequencing platform using fungal ITS primers. The number of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and the diversity indices showed that the Eranakulam mangrove sediments possessed higher fungal abundance, species richness and diversity than the mangrove sediments of Kannur. Ascomycota was most predominant phyla identified and a total of 11 classes, 20 orders, 34 families and 36 genera were obtained from the mangrove sediments. Talaromyces, which is not a commonly reported genus from Indian mangroves was the most prominent genera found in our study. The diversity heat map showed that 16 genera were exclusive to Eranakulam mangrove sediments while 5 genera were exclusive to Kannur samples. The metagenomics data of the mangrove sediments in our study revealed the presence of many fungal strains with vast biotechnological potential which can be further explored in the technology development.
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