Microbiota Differences of the Comb Jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi in Native and Invasive Sub-Populations

Cornelia Jaspers,Thorsten B H Reusch,Sven Künzel,Martin A Fischer,Ruth A Schmitz,Nancy Weiland-Bräuer

doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00635

Abstract

The translocation of non-indigenous species around the world, especially in marine systems, is a matter of concern for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. While specific traits are often recognized to influence the success in the establishment of non-indigenous species, the impact of the associated microbial community for the fitness, performance and invasion success of basal marine metazoans remains vastly unknown. In this study, we compared bacterial composition patterns of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in different native and invasive sub-populations along with the genetic structure of the host (polymorphic microsatellite markers). Amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene (V1-V2 hypervariable regions) revealed that M. leidyi as representative of the phylum Ctenophora, the sister group to all metazoans, harbored a distinct microbiota compared to the ambient seawater, which significantly differed across two major tissues, namely epidermis and gastrodermis. Moreover, we identified significant differences in bacterial community compositions between native and invasive sub-populations of M. leidyi indicating, that the microbiota community is likely influenced by the genotypic background of the host.

Highlights

All multicellular organisms are intimately associated with microbes and jointly constitute metaorganisms, a fact that is attaining large public and scientific attention
operational taxonomic units (OTU) significantly correlated with any axis in a significant redundancy analysis (RDA) model were determined by using the envfit function with 105 permutations, followed by Benjamini-Hochberg correction
The microbiota associated with different epithelia and sub-populations of M. leidyi as well as the bacterial communities of ambient water were analyzed by Illumina sequencing the hypervariable V1-V2 regions of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene

Summary

INTRODUCTION

All multicellular organisms are intimately associated with microbes and jointly constitute metaorganisms, a fact that is attaining large public and scientific attention. For western Eurasia, two distinct invasion events can be differentiated with a first introduction into the Black Sea with subsequently spreading throughout adjacent waters including the Mediterranean Sea, and a more recent introduction into north-western Europe (Reusch et al, 2010; Jaspers et al, 2018) Both introductions can be traced to different sub-population origins in the native habitat with the north European invasion originating from the north-east coast of the United States, while the southern invasion can be traced back to the Gulf of Mexico and south-east coast of the United States (Bolte et al, 2013; Bayha et al, 2015). The objectives of this study are to investigate (1) the effect of M. leidyi sub-population origin on the microbiota diversity, (2) the bacterial community differentiation between specific M. leidyi tissue compartments and 3) assess differences in the microbiome of native versus invasive sub-populations by using standardized sampling and sequencing methods

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT