Diversity, distribution and ecology of fungal communities present in Antarctic lake sediments uncovered by DNA metabarcoding

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 8407
• Main Authors: de Souza, Láuren Machado Drumond, Lirio, Juan Manuel, Coria, Silvia Herminda, Lopes, Fabyano Alvares Cardoso, Convey, Peter, Carvalho-Silva, Micheline, de Oliveira, Fábio Soares, Rosa, Carlos Augusto, Câmara, Paulo Eduardo Aguiar Saraiva, Rosa, Luiz Henrique
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 19-05-2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/326/171; 631/326/193; 631/326/2565; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Environmental DNA; Fungi; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lake sediments; Lakes; multidisciplinary; Nucleotide sequence; Phytopathogenic fungi; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sediments; Antarctica
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12290-6

We assessed fungal diversity in sediments obtained from four lakes in the South Shetland Islands and James Ross Island, Antarctica, using DNA metabarcoding. We detected 218 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) dominated by the phyla
Ascomycota
,
Basidiomycota
,
Mortierellomycota
,
Mucoromycota
and
Chytridiomycota
. In addition, the rare phyla
Aphelidiomycota
,
Basidiobolomycota
,
Blastocladiomycota
,
Monoblepharomycota
,
Rozellomycota
and
Zoopagomycota
as well as fungal-like Straminopila belonging to the phyla
Bacillariophyta
and
Oomycota
were detected. The fungal assemblages were dominated by unknown fungal taxa (Fungal sp. 1 and Fungal sp. 2), followed by
Talaromyces rubicundus
and
Dactylonectria anthuriicola
. In general, they displayed high diversity, richness and moderate dominance. Sequences representing saprophytic, pathogenic and symbiotic fungi were detected, including the phytopathogenic fungus
D. anthuriicola
that was abundant, in the relatively young Soto Lake on Deception Island. The lake sediments studied contained the DNA of rich, diverse and complex fungal communities, including both fungi commonly reported in Antarctica and other taxa considered to be rare. However, as the study was based on the use of environmental DNA, which does not unequivocally confirm the presence of active or viable organisms, further studies using other approaches such as shotgun sequencing are required to elucidate the ecology of fungi in these Antarctic lake sediments.