Chaverri Priscila, Chaverri Gloriana
Escuela de Biología and Centro de Investigaciones en Productos Naturales (CIPRONA), Universidad de Costa Rica, San Pedro, Costa Rica.
Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Anim Microbiome. 2022 Mar 18;4(1):24. doi: 10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w.
Bats are important long-distance dispersers of many tropical plants, yet, by consuming fruits, they may disperse not only the plant's seeds, but also the mycobiota within those fruits. We characterized the culture-dependent and independent fungal communities in fruits of Ficus colubrinae and feces of Ectophylla alba to determine if passage through the digestive tract of bats affected the total mycobiota.
Using presence/absence and normalized abundance data from fruits and feces, we demonstrate that the fungal communities were significantly different, even though there was an overlap of ca. 38% of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs). We show that some of the fungi from fruits were also present and grew from fecal samples. Fecal fungal communities were dominated by Agaricomycetes, followed by Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Malasseziomycetes, while fruit samples were dominated by Dothideomycetes, followed by Sordariomycetes, Agaricomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Laboulbeniomycetes. Linear discriminant analyses (LDA) show that, for bat feces, the indicator taxa include Basidiomycota (i.e., Agaricomycetes: Polyporales and Agaricales), and the ascomycetous class Eurotiomycetes (i.e., Eurotiales, Aspergillaceae). For fruits, indicator taxa are in the Ascomycota (i.e., Dothideomycetes: Botryosphaeriales; Laboulbeniomycetes: Pyxidiophorales; and Sordariomycetes: Glomerellales). In our study, the differences in fungal species composition between the two communities (fruits vs. feces) reflected on the changes in the functional diversity. For example, the core community in bat feces is constituted by saprobes and animal commensals, while that of fruits is composed mostly of phytopathogens and arthropod-associated fungi.
Our study provides the groundwork to continue disentangling the direct and indirect symbiotic relationships in an ecological network that has not received enough attention: fungi-plants-bats. Findings also suggest that the role of frugivores in plant-animal mutualistic networks may extend beyond seed dispersal: they may also promote the dispersal of potentially beneficial microbial symbionts while, for example, hindering those that can cause plant disease.
蝙蝠是许多热带植物重要的远距离传播者，然而，通过食用果实，它们不仅可能传播植物种子，还可能传播果实内的真菌群落。我们对哥伦比亚榕果实和白外叶蝠粪便中依赖培养和不依赖培养的真菌群落进行了特征分析，以确定通过蝙蝠消化道是否会影响真菌群落整体。
利用果实和粪便的存在/缺失以及标准化丰度数据，我们证明真菌群落存在显著差异，尽管扩增子序列变体（ASV）约有38%重叠。我们发现果实中的一些真菌在粪便样本中也存在且能生长。粪便真菌群落以伞菌纲为主，其次是座囊菌纲、粪壳菌纲、散囊菌纲和马拉色菌纲，而果实样本以座囊菌纲为主，其次是粪壳菌纲、伞菌纲、散囊菌纲和虫囊菌纲。线性判别分析（LDA）表明，对于蝙蝠粪便，指示类群包括担子菌门（即伞菌纲：多孔菌目和伞菌目）以及子囊菌纲散囊菌目（即散囊菌目、曲霉科）。对于果实，指示类群属于子囊菌门（即座囊菌纲：葡萄座腔菌目；虫囊菌纲：Pyxidiophorales；粪壳菌纲：小丛壳菌目）。在我们的研究中，两个群落（果实与粪便）真菌物种组成的差异反映在功能多样性的变化上。例如，蝙蝠粪便中的核心群落由腐生菌和动物共生菌组成，而果实的核心群落主要由植物病原体和与节肢动物相关的真菌组成。
我们的研究为继续厘清一个未得到足够关注的生态网络中的直接和间接共生关系奠定了基础：真菌 - 植物 - 蝙蝠。研究结果还表明，食果动物在植物 - 动物互利网络中的作用可能不仅限于种子传播：它们还可能促进潜在有益微生物共生体的传播，同时例如阻碍那些可导致植物疾病的微生物传播。
