Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Citadel Hill, Plymouth, PL1 2PB, UK.
Área de Macroalgas y Biodiversidad, Instituto del Mar del Perú - IMARPE, av. La Ribera # 805, Huanchaco, La Libertad, Perú.
Microb Ecol. 2023 Nov;86(4):2574-2582. doi: 10.1007/s00248-023-02262-2. Epub 2023 Jul 7.
Ecological communities are structured by a range of processes that operate over a range of spatial scales. While our understanding of such biodiversity patterns in macro-communities is well studied, our understanding at the microbial level is still lacking. Bacteria can be free living or associated with host eukaryotes, forming part of a wider "microbiome," which is fundamental for host performance and health. For habitat forming foundation-species, host-bacteria relationships likely play disproportionate roles in mediating processes for the wider ecosystem. Here, we describe host-bacteria communities across multiple spatial scales (i.e., from 10s of m to 100s of km) in the understudied kelp, Eisenia cokeri, in Peru. We found that E. cokeri supports a distinct bacterial community compared to the surrounding seawater, but the structure of these communities varied markedly at the regional (~480 km), site (1-10 km), and individual (10s of m) scale. The marked regional-scale differences we observed may be driven by a range of processes, including temperature, upwelling intensity, or regional connectivity patterns. However, despite this variability, we observed consistency in the form of a persistent core community at the genus level. Here, the genera Arenicella, Blastopirellula, Granulosicoccus, and Litorimonas were found in >80% of samples and comprised ~53% of total sample abundance. These genera have been documented within bacterial communities associated with kelps and other seaweed species from around the world and may be important for host function and wider ecosystem health in general.
生态群落由一系列在不同空间尺度上起作用的过程构成。虽然我们对宏观群落中的这种生物多样性模式有了很好的了解，但在微生物层面上的理解仍然不足。细菌可以自由生活或与宿主真核生物相关联，形成更广泛的“微生物组”的一部分，这对宿主的表现和健康至关重要。对于形成栖息地的基础物种，宿主-细菌关系可能在调解更广泛生态系统的过程中发挥不成比例的作用。在这里，我们描述了在秘鲁未充分研究的巨藻 Eisenia cokeri 中多个空间尺度（即从数十米到数百公里）的宿主-细菌群落。我们发现，E. cokeri 支持与周围海水相比具有独特的细菌群落，但这些群落的结构在区域（480 公里）、地点（1-10 公里）和个体（数十米）尺度上有明显差异。我们观察到的显著的区域尺度差异可能是由一系列过程驱动的，包括温度、上升流强度或区域连通模式。然而，尽管存在这种可变性，我们在属水平上观察到了一致性，存在一个持久的核心群落。在这里，Arenicella、Blastopirellula、Granulosicoccus 和 Litorimonas 这几个属在超过 80%的样本中被发现，占总样本丰度的53%。这些属已在与世界各地巨藻和其他海藻物种相关的细菌群落中被记录下来，可能对宿主功能和更广泛的生态系统健康具有重要意义。
