Bacterial diversity in the clarki ecotype of the photosynthetic sacoglossan, Elysia crispata
Padmanabhan Mahadevan,
Michael L. Middlebrooks,
Corresponding Author
Padmanabhan Mahadevan
Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Padmanabhan Mahadevan and Michael L. Middlebrooks, Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606.
Emails: [email protected] (PM); [email protected] (MLM)
Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (lead), Funding acquisition (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Software (lead), Validation (equal), Visualization (lead), Writing - original draft (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal)
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Michael L. Middlebrooks
Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Padmanabhan Mahadevan and Michael L. Middlebrooks, Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606.
Emails: [email protected] (PM); [email protected] (MLM)
Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (supporting), Funding acquisition (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Software (supporting), Validation (equal), Visualization (supporting), Writing - original draft (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal)
Search for more papers by this authorPadmanabhan Mahadevan,
Michael L. Middlebrooks,
Corresponding Author
Padmanabhan Mahadevan
Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Padmanabhan Mahadevan and Michael L. Middlebrooks, Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606.
Emails: [email protected] (PM); [email protected] (MLM)
Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (lead), Funding acquisition (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Software (lead), Validation (equal), Visualization (lead), Writing - original draft (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal)
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Michael L. Middlebrooks
Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Padmanabhan Mahadevan and Michael L. Middlebrooks, Department of Biology, The University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606.
Emails: [email protected] (PM); [email protected] (MLM)
Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (supporting), Funding acquisition (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Software (supporting), Validation (equal), Visualization (supporting), Writing - original draft (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal)
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Few studies have examined the bacterial communities associated with photosynthetic sacoglossan sea slugs. In this study, we determined the bacterial diversity in the clarki ecotype, Elysia crispata using 16S rRNA sequencing. Computational analysis using QIIME2 revealed variability between individual samples, with the Spirochaetes and Bacteroidetes phyla dominating most samples. Tenericutes and Proteobacteria were also found, among other phyla. Computational metabolic profiling of the bacteria revealed a variety of metabolic pathways involving carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, and amino acid metabolism. Although associated bacteria may be involved in mutually beneficial metabolic pathways, there was a high degree of variation in the bacterial community of individual slugs. This suggests that many of these relationships are likely opportunistic rather than obligate and that many of these bacteria may live commensally providing no major benefit to the slugs.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
None declared.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The sequence data from this study are available in the NCBI repository under the BioProject ID PRJNA607610: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA607610.
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