Distinct fungal communities associated with different organs of the mangrove Sonneratia alba in the Malay Peninsula
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IMA Fungus
RESEARCH
Open Access
Distinct fungal communities associated with different organs of the mangrove Sonneratia alba in the Malay Peninsula Nicole Li Ying Lee1, Danwei Huang1,2, Zheng Bin Randolph Quek1, Jen Nie Lee3 and Benjamin J. Wainwright4*
Abstract Mangrove forests are key tropical marine ecosystems that are rich in fungi, but our understanding of fungal communities associated with mangrove trees and their various organs remains limited because much of the diversity lies within the microbiome. In this study, we investigated the fungal communities associated with the mangrove tree Sonneratia alba throughout Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. At each sampling location, we collected leaves, fruits, pneumatophores and sediment samples and performed amplicon sequencing of the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 1 to characterise the associated communities. Results show distinct fungal communities at each sampled location with further differentiation according to the plant part. We find a significant distance decay of similarity, particularly for sediment samples due to the greater variability of sediment environments relative to the more stable fungal habitats provided by living plant organs. We are able to assign taxonomy to the majority of sequences from leaves and fruits, but a much larger portion of the sequences recovered from pneumatophores and sediment samples could not be identified. This pattern underscores the limited mycological research performed in marine environments and demonstrates the need for a concerted research effort on multiple species to fully characterise the coastal microbiome and its role in the functioning of marine ecosystems. Keywords: Fungal diversity, Internal transcribed spacer, Mangrove microbiome, Marine fungi, Microbial ecology, Southeast Asia
INTRODUCTION Mangroves are a globally distributed group of salt tolerant trees and shrubs that are confined to brackish intertidal zones, estuaries, lagoons and backwaters throughout the tropics and subtropics (Thatoi et al. 2013). Straddling the interface between marine and terrestrial ecosystems, they provide important buffers that dissipate wave energy, stabilising coastlines and protecting against coastal erosion and natural hazards such as hurricanes and tsunamis (Williams 2005; Wee et al. 2019). Mangroves provide critical ecological habitats that host high levels of biodiversity * Correspondence: [email protected] 4 Yale-NUS College, National University of Singapore, 16 College Avenue West, Singapore 138527, Singapore Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
and act as a nursery for many juvenile coral reef species (Abu El-Regal and Ibrahim 2014; Mehvar et al. 2018). Despite these benefits, mangrove clearance for aquaculture and urban development is rampant in many areas of the world. As much as 35% of global mangrove cover has been removed, with Asia having lost an estimated 33% of its total mangrove cover between 1980 and 1990 (Richards and Friess 2016; Sanderman et al. 2018
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