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Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet

BACKGROUND: Bats are important long-distance dispersers of many tropical plants, yet, by consuming fruits, they may disperse not only the plant’s seeds, but also the mycobiota within those fruits. We characterized the culture-dependent and independent fungal communities in fruits of Ficus colubrinae...

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Autores principales: Chaverri, Priscila, Chaverri, Gloriana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35303964
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w
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author Chaverri, Priscila
Chaverri, Gloriana
author_facet Chaverri, Priscila
Chaverri, Gloriana
author_sort Chaverri, Priscila
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Bats are important long-distance dispersers of many tropical plants, yet, by consuming fruits, they may disperse not only the plant’s seeds, but also the mycobiota within those fruits. We characterized the culture-dependent and independent fungal communities in fruits of Ficus colubrinae and feces of Ectophylla alba to determine if passage through the digestive tract of bats affected the total mycobiota. RESULTS: Using presence/absence and normalized abundance data from fruits and feces, we demonstrate that the fungal communities were significantly different, even though there was an overlap of ca. 38% of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs). We show that some of the fungi from fruits were also present and grew from fecal samples. Fecal fungal communities were dominated by Agaricomycetes, followed by Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Malasseziomycetes, while fruit samples were dominated by Dothideomycetes, followed by Sordariomycetes, Agaricomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Laboulbeniomycetes. Linear discriminant analyses (LDA) show that, for bat feces, the indicator taxa include Basidiomycota (i.e., Agaricomycetes: Polyporales and Agaricales), and the ascomycetous class Eurotiomycetes (i.e., Eurotiales, Aspergillaceae). For fruits, indicator taxa are in the Ascomycota (i.e., Dothideomycetes: Botryosphaeriales; Laboulbeniomycetes: Pyxidiophorales; and Sordariomycetes: Glomerellales). In our study, the differences in fungal species composition between the two communities (fruits vs. feces) reflected on the changes in the functional diversity. For example, the core community in bat feces is constituted by saprobes and animal commensals, while that of fruits is composed mostly of phytopathogens and arthropod-associated fungi. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides the groundwork to continue disentangling the direct and indirect symbiotic relationships in an ecological network that has not received enough attention: fungi-plants-bats. Findings also suggest that the role of frugivores in plant-animal mutualistic networks may extend beyond seed dispersal: they may also promote the dispersal of potentially beneficial microbial symbionts while, for example, hindering those that can cause plant disease. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w.
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spelling pubmed-89321792022-03-23 Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet Chaverri, Priscila Chaverri, Gloriana Anim Microbiome Research Article BACKGROUND: Bats are important long-distance dispersers of many tropical plants, yet, by consuming fruits, they may disperse not only the plant’s seeds, but also the mycobiota within those fruits. We characterized the culture-dependent and independent fungal communities in fruits of Ficus colubrinae and feces of Ectophylla alba to determine if passage through the digestive tract of bats affected the total mycobiota. RESULTS: Using presence/absence and normalized abundance data from fruits and feces, we demonstrate that the fungal communities were significantly different, even though there was an overlap of ca. 38% of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs). We show that some of the fungi from fruits were also present and grew from fecal samples. Fecal fungal communities were dominated by Agaricomycetes, followed by Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Malasseziomycetes, while fruit samples were dominated by Dothideomycetes, followed by Sordariomycetes, Agaricomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Laboulbeniomycetes. Linear discriminant analyses (LDA) show that, for bat feces, the indicator taxa include Basidiomycota (i.e., Agaricomycetes: Polyporales and Agaricales), and the ascomycetous class Eurotiomycetes (i.e., Eurotiales, Aspergillaceae). For fruits, indicator taxa are in the Ascomycota (i.e., Dothideomycetes: Botryosphaeriales; Laboulbeniomycetes: Pyxidiophorales; and Sordariomycetes: Glomerellales). In our study, the differences in fungal species composition between the two communities (fruits vs. feces) reflected on the changes in the functional diversity. For example, the core community in bat feces is constituted by saprobes and animal commensals, while that of fruits is composed mostly of phytopathogens and arthropod-associated fungi. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides the groundwork to continue disentangling the direct and indirect symbiotic relationships in an ecological network that has not received enough attention: fungi-plants-bats. Findings also suggest that the role of frugivores in plant-animal mutualistic networks may extend beyond seed dispersal: they may also promote the dispersal of potentially beneficial microbial symbionts while, for example, hindering those that can cause plant disease. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w. BioMed Central 2022-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8932179/ /pubmed/35303964 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Article
Chaverri, Priscila
Chaverri, Gloriana
Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title_full Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title_fullStr Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title_full_unstemmed Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title_short Fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat Ectophylla alba and its highly specialized Ficus colubrinae diet
title_sort fungal communities in feces of the frugivorous bat ectophylla alba and its highly specialized ficus colubrinae diet
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35303964
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00169-w
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