School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Centre for Marine Science and Innovation, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
J Phycol. 2024 Aug;60(4):785-796. doi: 10.1111/jpy.13485. Epub 2024 Jul 24.
Seaweeds play a strong ecological and economical role along the world's coastlines, where they support industries (e.g., aquaculture, bioproducts) and essential ecosystem services (e.g., biodiversity, fisheries, carbon capture). Evidence from wild and cultured seaweeds suggests that microorganisms play crucial roles in their health and functioning, prompting the need for considering seaweeds and their microbiome as a coherent entity or "holobiont." Here we show that the number of studies investigating seaweed hosts and their microbiome have increased in the last two decades. This likely reflects the increase in the appreciation of the importance of microbiomes for eukaryotic hosts, improved molecular approaches used to characterize their interactions, and increasing interest in commercial use of seaweeds. However, although increasing, most studies of seaweed holobionts have focused on (i) a few seaweed species of ecological or commercial significance, (ii) interactions involving only bacteria, and (iii) descriptive rather than experimental approaches. The relatively few experimental studies have mostly focused on manipulating abiotic factors to examine responses of seaweeds and their microbiome. Of the few studies that directly manipulated microorganisms to investigate their effects on seaweeds, most were done in laboratory or aquaria. We emphasize the need to move beyond the descriptions of patterns to experimental approaches for understanding causation and mechanisms. We argue that such experimental approaches are necessary for a better understanding of seaweed holobionts, for management actions for wild and cultivated seaweeds, and to better integrate studies of seaweed holobionts with the broader fields of seaweed ecology and biology, which are strongly experimental.
海藻在世界沿海地区具有强大的生态和经济作用，为水产养殖、生物制品等产业以及生物多样性、渔业、碳捕获等基本生态系统服务提供支持。野生和养殖海藻的证据表明，微生物在其健康和功能中发挥着关键作用，这促使人们需要将海藻及其微生物组视为一个连贯的实体或“整体生物”。在这里，我们表明，在过去二十年中，研究海藻宿主及其微生物组的数量有所增加。这可能反映出人们越来越认识到微生物组对真核宿主的重要性，用于描述它们相互作用的分子方法得到了改进，以及人们对海藻商业用途的兴趣日益增加。然而，尽管有所增加，但大多数关于海藻整体生物的研究都集中在：（i）少数具有生态或商业重要性的海藻物种；（ii）仅涉及细菌的相互作用；（iii）描述性而非实验性方法。相对较少的实验研究主要集中在操纵非生物因素上，以研究海藻及其微生物组的反应。在少数直接操纵微生物以研究它们对海藻影响的研究中，大多数是在实验室或水族箱中进行的。我们强调需要超越描述性模式，采用实验方法来理解因果关系和机制。我们认为，这种实验方法对于更好地理解海藻整体生物、管理野生和养殖海藻以及更好地将海藻整体生物研究与更加强调实验的海藻生态学和生物学领域结合起来是必要的。
