Fungi have been reported as common inhabitants of the maritime waters in Antarctica by studies based on culture-dependent methods. More recently, results obtained using DNA sequencing technologies, revealed that fungal diversity worldwide has been underestimated by culture methods. The present study provides the first characterization of fungal communities in the coastal waters of King George Island (maritime Antarctica) using both culture-dependent and high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods. HTS demostrated a higher level of fungal diversity than the obtained by culture methods. A high prevalence of basidiomycetous yeasts and ascomycetous filamentous fungi was confirmed by both methods, however, Chythriomycota, Rozellomycota, lichenized fungi and Malassezia spp. were detected only by HTS. Correspondingly, members of some genera, such as Metschnikowia, were only found by culture-dependent methods. Our results confirm that culturing and HTS, should be seen as complementary approaches that enable one to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the composition of microbial communities.

根据基于文化的方法的研究，真菌已被报告为南极洲海域的常见居民。最近，使用 DNA 测序技术获得的结果表明，培养方法低估了世界范围内的真菌多样性。本研究首次使用文化相关和高通量测序 (HTS) 方法对乔治王岛（南极洲海洋）沿海水域的真菌群落进行了表征。HTS 展示了比通过培养方法获得的更高水平的真菌多样性。两种方法都证实了担子菌酵母和子囊菌丝状真菌的高流行率，然而，壶菌门、罗泽尔菌门、地衣真菌和马拉色菌属 仅被 HTS 检测到。相应地，某些属的成员，例如Metschnikowia，只能通过依赖于培养的方法发现。我们的结果证实，培养和 HTS 应该被视为互补的方法，使人们能够更全面地了解微生物群落的组成。