Abstract
Microorganisms play a central role in the structure and function of marine ecosystems. Its vast diversity makes the disentangling of the microbial taxonomic composition an essential task. Engaño Bay, a highly productive temperate region on the Patagonian Atlantic Coast, constitutes a remote uncharted area. Here, metabarcoding analyses revealed that the microbiome community (cells < 5 µm) of surface water is dominated by a few bacterial taxa along with diverse low frequency groups. A substantial number of sequences of photosynthetic picoeukaryotes (PPE) were also evidenced, yet no cyanobacterial sequences could be observed. Specific PCR-detection of cyanobacteria, monitoring of viruses specific for cyanobacteria and PPE, microbiological isolation, and molecular diet analyses confirmed these findings. Cyanobacteria were PCR detected in three out of thirteen samples, while virological monitoring indicated the presence of PPE viruses and the absence of cyanobacteria phages. Traditional culture methods allowed the isolation of Ostreococcus and Micromonas spp. from samples belonging to warm and cold seasons, respectively. Molecular diet analyses showed that PPE were grazed by nanoplankters and that grazing pressure on PPE was stronger than on bacteria. Phylogenetic characterization of viral sequences indicated the presence of Ostreococcus virus, four Micromonas virus lineages and a divergent clade of Phycodnavirus belonging to no known viral species, pointing out a complex scenario of its hosts. This work characterizes the marine microbiome from a temperate uncharted region at the Southern Hemisphere, demonstrating the prevalence of PPE as primary producers with a complex scenario which warrant further studies.
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Data availability
GenBank BioSamples SAMN04495742, SAMN04495743, SAMN04495744 and SAMN04495745. GenBank accession numbers for sequences generated in this work KX601722-KX601794, KX601972-KX602003, KC210884-KC21089, MH348879-MH348890, MN719512-MN719607, MN719608-MN719624, MN719625-MN719633, MW960118-MW960164, MW960180- MW960206, MW961599-MW961645, MW960206-MW969643 and MZ215817-MZ215846.
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References
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Acknowledgements
MAB and LIG are doctoral fellows at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. JMM and LRJ are members of the CONICET scientific career. We thank Prof. Isabel Albarracín for kindly providing the reference material of cyanobacteria used in this work.
We would like to thank both anonymous reviewers and the editor for the suggestions made in order to improve the final manuscript.
Funding
This study has been financed by the projects PICT2016-2795 and PICT-2020-SERIEA-03643 from the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Promotion to JMM and LRJ, PI 1657- 80020200100022UP from The National University of Patagonia San Juan Bosco to JM, PIP11220200102657 from CONICET to L.R.J. and the Argentine Civil Association Genetics (ArGen).
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Giaccardi, L.I., Badenas, M.A., Jones, L.R. et al. Abundant microbes of surface sea waters of the uncharted Engaño Bay at the Atlantic Patagonian Coast: relevance of bacteria-sized photosynthetic eukaryotes. Aquat Ecol 56, 1217–1230 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-022-09962-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-022-09962-w