Abstract
Large eukaryotes support diverse communities of microbes on their surface—epibiota—that profoundly influence their biology. Alternate factors known to structure complex patterns of microbial diversity—host evolutionary history and ecology, environmental conditions and stochasticity—do not act independently and it is challenging to disentangle their relative effects. Here, we surveyed the epibiota from 38 sympatric seaweed species that span diverse clades and have convergent morphology, which strongly influences seaweed ecology. Host identity explains most of the variation in epibiont communities and deeper host phylogenetic relationships (e.g., genus level) explain a small but significant portion of epibiont community variation. Strikingly, epibiota community composition is significantly influenced by host morphology and epibiota richness increases with morphological complexity of the seaweed host. This effect is robust after controlling for phylogenetic non-independence and is strongest for crustose seaweeds. We experimentally validated the effect of host morphology by quantifying bacterial community assembly on latex sheets cut to resemble three seaweed morphologies. The patterns match those observed in our field survey. Thus, biodiversity increases with habitat complexity in host-associated microbial communities, mirroring patterns observed in animal communities. We suggest that host morphology and structural complexity are underexplored mechanisms structuring microbial communities.
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Data availability
Raw amplicon sequence data for both the 16 S and 18 S rRNA genes from our field survey have been deposited at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI; www.ebi.ac.uk; Accession number PRJEB25010). Raw 16 S rRNA gene data from artificial seaweeds have also been accession at EBI (Accession number: PRJEB25951). Sanger sequences used to confirm host species identity have been deposited at NCBI and the corresponding accession numbers are listed in Table S1.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Loudon for field assistance, K. Grigore and C. Jensen for lab support, E. Morien and C. Van Den Elzen for bioinformatics help, Hakai Geospatial for help with Fig. 1, and staff of the Hakai Institute Calvert Island Field Station for logistical support. We also thank the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations. This work was supported by a grant from the Tula Foundation to LWP, PJK, and PTM. MAL and KRH were supported as Hakai Postdoctoral Scholars through the Tula Foundation. FM was supported by a Banting Fellowship. MYC was supported by an NSERC CGS Masters Award, a Bank of Montreal Graduate Fellowship and the Vladimir J Krajina Scholarship in Plant Ecology.
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Lemay, M.A., Chen, M.Y., Mazel, F. et al. Morphological complexity affects the diversity of marine microbiomes. ISME J 15, 1372–1386 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-020-00856-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-020-00856-z
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