Molecular evidence of host-parasite interactions between zooplankton and Syndiniales
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Molecular evidence of host-parasite interactions between zooplankton and Syndiniales S. Zamora-Terol
. A. Novotny . M. Winder
Received: 10 July 2020 / Accepted: 19 November 2020 Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Although parasitism is one of the most prevalent interactions in nature, studies of aquatic food webs rarely include parasites. Syndiniales (Dinophyceae, Alveolata) is a diverse parasitic group of dinoflagellates, common in all marine environments, and are described as dominant components of pelagic ecosystems. However, their temporal dynamics, prevalence, and host-specificity are poorly known. Using DNA metabarcoding to explore trophic interactions of zooplankton, we found a high proportion of Syndiniales sequence reads associated with the targeted consumers. We observed the occurrence of Syndiniales in copepods, cladocerans, appendicularians, and polychaete larvae, ranging between 11 and 36% relative read abundance, encompassing 11 main putative clades. Zooplankton–Syndiniales interactions showed variability in occurrence across the taxa, but
Handling Editor: Te´lesphore Sime-Ngando.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-020-09816-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users. S. Zamora-Terol (&) A. Novotny M. Winder Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] S. Zamora-Terol Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway
also certain host-specificity. The study suggests that the observed copepod–Syndiniales interactions can be both direct parasitic infections and the result of trophic transmission through potentially infected prey by Syndiniales. Given the quantitative importance of Syndiniales and zooplankton in marine environments, our findings emphasize that their interactions should be recognized as key players in the structure and connectivity of plankton food webs. Keywords Syndiniales Zooplankton Hostparasite Food web DNA metabarcoding
Introduction Despite the increasingly recognized relevance of parasites in food webs and biogeochemical cycling in the marine environment (Clarke et al. 2019; Lafferty et al. 2006), parasitic interactions are rarely considered in modelling or ecological investigations. Including parasites in ecological networks increases species richness and the number of food web links (Lafferty et al. 2006). Parasites can further facilitate energy transfer and promote species succession through altering interspecific competition (Valois and Poulin 2015). Marine surveys targeting the protist diversity often observe novel uncultured marine alveolate groups, which include the parasitic
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dinoflagellates Syndiniales, as the most abundant sequences (Guillou et al. 2008; Massana 2011; Cleary and Durbin 2016). Parasites of the order Syndiniales are widespread in marine environments (Clarke et al. 2019; Guillou et al.
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