The Composition and Assembly of Bacterial Communities across the Rhizosphere and Phyllosphere Compartments of Phragmites Australis

Qi Zhou,Rui Huang,Xiaomin Zhang,Xiaowei He,Shuren Wang,Rujia He,Congcong Jiao,Jin Zeng,Dayong Zhao

doi:10.3390/d11060098

Abstract

The rhizosphere and the phyllosphere represent two different epiphytic compartments of host plant, which are closely related to plant growth, health, and productivity. However, the understanding of the diversity, composition, and assembly of the bacterial communities in different epiphytic microenvironments of large emerged macrophytes has remained elusive, especially the abundant and rare taxa across rhizosphere and phyllosphere communities. In this study, we collected samples of two different epiphytic compartments (rhizosphere and phyllosphere) of Phragmites australis. Both 16S rRNA gene-based high-throughput sequencing and null-model analysis were employed to determine the difference in the composition and assembly of above-mentioned epiphytic bacterial communities. Our results indicated that bacterial communities of rhizosphere exhibited higher diversity and richness than those of phyllosphere. Deterministic processes dominated the assembly of bacterial community in both compartments, and stochastic processes contributed a certain proportion (30.30%) in the assembly of phyllosphere bacterial community. We also found that rare taxa contributed more significantly to the alpha- and beta-diversity of bacterial community than those of abundant taxa. The obtained data are useful for better understanding the bacterial community of different epiphytic compartments of P. australis.

Highlights

IntroductionPhragmites australis (P. australis) is a kind of perennial gramineous emergent aquatic plant species with strong adaptability and a wide ecological amplitude, which can invade new territory efficiently to form dense dominant communities in aquatic ecosystems such as lakeside belts and wetlands [1]
Phragmites australis (P. australis) is a kind of perennial gramineous emergent aquatic plant species with strong adaptability and a wide ecological amplitude, which can invade new territory efficiently to form dense dominant communities in aquatic ecosystems such as lakeside belts and wetlands [1].It can absorb a large amount of organic pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus, toxic substances, and heavy metals, thereby reducing the nutrient level and pollution degree of the wetland and promoting its ecological processes [2,3]
Some studies revealed that plants have different microbial communities on inside different organs, and that the bacterial communities related to the surface of root and leaf are the most abundant and the most characteristic [8]; they are called the rhizosphere bacterial community [9] and the phyllosphere bacterial community [10,11], respectively

Summary

Introduction

Phragmites australis (P. australis) is a kind of perennial gramineous emergent aquatic plant species with strong adaptability and a wide ecological amplitude, which can invade new territory efficiently to form dense dominant communities in aquatic ecosystems such as lakeside belts and wetlands [1] It can absorb a large amount of organic pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus, toxic substances, and heavy metals, thereby reducing the nutrient level and pollution degree of the wetland and promoting its ecological processes [2,3]. The phyllosphere is a habitat with more intense environmental heterogeneity than rhizosphere [12,13], and the bacterial communities across different types of habitat subjected to different dominant control factors, such as dispersal limitation and environmental selection, but the differences between the rhizosphere and phyllosphere had not been confirmed yet [8,13]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion