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Manipulation of the seagrass-associated microbiome reduces disease severity |
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| Authors: | Olivia J Graham Emily M Adamczyk Siobhan Schenk Phoebe Dawkins Samantha Burke Emily Chei Kaitlyn Cisz Sukanya Dayal Jack Elstner Arjun Lev Pillai Hausner Taylor Hughes Omisha Manglani Miles McDonald Chloe Mikles Anna Poslednik Audrey Vinton Laura Wegener Parfrey C Drew Harvell |
| Institution: | 1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA;2. Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, Unceded x?m?θk??y??m (Musqueam) Territory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Data curation (equal), Funding acquisition (equal), ?Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Project administration (supporting), Writing - original draft (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal);3. Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada;4. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA Contribution: ?Investigation (supporting), Supervision (supporting);5. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA Contribution: ?Investigation (supporting);6. Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, Unceded x?m?θk??y??m (Musqueam) Territory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (supporting), Funding acquisition (equal), ?Investigation (supporting), Methodology (equal), Resources (equal), Software (lead), Visualization (supporting), Writing - review & editing (equal);7. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Formal analysis (supporting), Funding acquisition (equal), Methodology (equal), Resources (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal) |
| Abstract: | Host-associated microbes influence host health and function and can be a first line of defence against infections. While research increasingly shows that terrestrial plant microbiomes contribute to bacterial, fungal, and oomycete disease resistance, no comparable experimental work has investigated marine plant microbiomes or more diverse disease agents. We test the hypothesis that the eelgrass (Zostera marina) leaf microbiome increases resistance to seagrass wasting disease. From field eelgrass with paired diseased and asymptomatic tissue, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing revealed that bacterial composition and richness varied markedly between diseased and asymptomatic tissue in one of the two years. This suggests that the influence of disease on eelgrass microbial communities may vary with environmental conditions. We next experimentally reduced the eelgrass microbiome with antibiotics and bleach, then inoculated plants with Labyrinthula zosterae, the causative agent of wasting disease. We detected significantly higher disease severity in eelgrass with a native microbiome than an experimentally reduced microbiome. Our results over multiple experiments do not support a protective role of the eelgrass microbiome against L. zosterae. Further studies of these marine host–microbe–pathogen relationships may continue to show new relationships between plant microbiomes and diseases. |
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