A comparison of the prokaryotic communities associated with seven seaweed species, sediment, and seawater from the Penghu archipelago, Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Seaweeds are a diverse, abundant, and ecologically important component of coral reef ecosystems. However, relatively little is known about their prokaryotic communities. In the present study, we assessed the prokaryotic communities of seven seaweed species, sediment, and seawater sampled in seas of the Taiwanese Penghu archipelago. The most abundant phyla in terms of sequences and OTUs were Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Tenericutes, Actinobacteria, Planctomycetes, Cyanobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia. This fits well with previous seaweed studies with the notable exception of Tenericutes. Tenericutes members were only abundant in the species Halimeda opuntia and Sargassum hemiphyllum var. chinense. One OTU, assigned to the genus Mycoplasma, dominated all samples of H. opuntia. The main difference in prokaryotic composition was between samples of the green seaweed H. opuntia and samples of the green seaweed species Caulerpa racemosa and Chlorodesmis fastigiata. The predicted functional profile of C. fastigiata was also distinct from that of the other seaweed species. There was also clear compositional variation between green and brown seaweed species with Verrucomicrobia abundance higher in brown seaweed species. OTU richness was also higher in brown than green seaweed species. The prokaryotic communities found in all seaweed species were compositionally distinct from those found in sediment and seawater. Most of the abundant OTUs sampled in the present study had high sequence similarities to organisms obtained from a range of hosts including sponges, corals, and other seaweed species.

KEYWORDS:

• Algae
• bacteria
• composition
• function
• Illumina

Acknowledgements

All specimens collected in Taiwan were under a permit (no. 20160316364) issued by MNPH. We would also like to acknowledge Thomas Swierts for help in the lab and Nicole de Voogd, Yi-Chin Wu, Yuan-Hao Lin, Ming-Hong Chang, Miao-Yin Syu and You-Hua Lin for their help in the field.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European funds through COMPETE [FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-008657] and by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Tecnnology (FCT) within the LESS CORAL [PTDC/AAC-AMB/115304/2009] project. Thanks are due for financial support to CESAM (UID/AMB/50017 - PCOI-01-0145-FEDER-007638), to FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC), and co-funding by FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and COMPETE 2020. This research was facilitated by the generous support of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Marine National Parks Headquarter (MNPH), Taiwan to Y. M. H. (MOST 105-2621-B-346-002 and MNPh 104403).