Surface microbiomes of diverse marine animals

 

In this article, surface microbiomes from marine life were examined over the contributions they have on the health, behavior, and ecology on a host. Three shallow water coral species and two whale species were observed in this study. Skin samples were collected from a North Atlantic humpback whale, and from a Beluga whale. The samples were taken and were placed in 10 mL of 0.2 um filter sterilized seawater for transportation. The coral tissue plus mucus swabs were placed in 4% glycerol and put in liquid nitrogen. The samples that were taken for the coral wee plated on five selected media type agars. The agars contained Cycloheximide and left to incubate for a maximum of fifteen days. The skin of the whales were filtered using 0.2 um filter and vortexed 10mL of 0.2 um filter sterilized natural seawater and 100 uL aliquots were plated at multiple dilutions. For the whale samples, 587 bacterial isolates and 5 fungal isolate were sequenced and identified using taxonomic identifications. There were five microbial phylums identified in the samples. The phylums included are Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actionobacteria, and Ascoycota. For the coral samples, there was a presence of Flavobacteriales, Bacillales, Rhodobacterales, and Sphingomonadles microbial orders 

The chart shows the sample percent phylogeny abundance for the samples that were taken. The taxonomic units are shown at the level of microbial order. The colors represent the same classes in clusters. Only values that were above 0.1% of OTUs abundance values are shown in the graph. The names on the x-axis are the samples names that were tested in this experiment. 
Figure taken from Keller et al. 2021 

Abigail G. Keller, Amy Apprill, Philippe Lebaron, Jooke Robins, Tracy A. Romano, Ellysia Overton, Yuying Ron, Ruiyi Yuan, Scott Pollara, and Kristen E. Whalen (2021) Characterizing the culturable surface microbimes of diverse marine animals. FEMS Microbiology Ecology. 97(4): 1-14