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Bacterial Diversity and Community Structure in Two Bornean Nepenthes Species with Differences in Nitrogen Acquisition Strategies

  • Plant Microbe Interactions
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Abstract

Carnivorous plants of the genus Nepenthes have been studied for over a century, but surprisingly little is known about associations with microorganisms. The two species Nepenthes rafflesiana and Nepenthes hemsleyana differ in their pitcher-mediated nutrient sources, sequestering nitrogen from arthropod prey and arthropods as well as bat faeces, respectively. We expected bacterial communities living in the pitchers to resemble this diet difference. Samples were taken from different parts of the pitchers (leaf, peristome, inside, outside, digestive fluid) of both species. Bacterial communities were determined using culture-independent high-throughput amplicon sequencing. Bacterial richness and community structure were similar in leaves, peristomes, inside and outside walls of both plant species. Regarding digestive fluids, bacterial richness was higher in N. hemsleyana than in N. rafflesiana. Additionally, digestive fluid communities were highly variable in structure, with strain-specific differences in community composition between replicates. Acidophilic taxa were mostly of low abundance, except the genus Acidocella, which strikingly reached extremely high levels in two N. rafflesiana fluids. In N. hemsleyana fluid, some taxa classified as vertebrate gut symbionts as well as saprophytes were enriched compared to N. rafflesiana, with saprophytes constituting potential competitors for nutrients. The high variation in community structure might be caused by a number of biotic and abiotic factors. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria were present in both study species, which might provide essential nutrients to the plant at times of low prey capture and/or rare encounters with bats.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Universitätsbund Würzburg e.V. for financially supporting this project (Grant number AZ-13-43) and the University of Würzburg/Land Bavaria for covering staff costs. We are furthermore most grateful to the Universiti Brunei Darussalam for logistical and financial support (URG 193) and the Brunei Darussalam Forestry Department for permission to enter forests and for granting the sampling permits (46/JPH/UND/17 PT.1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, 97074, Würzburg, Germany

    Wiebke Sickel, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter & Alexander Keller

  2. Faculty of Science, University Brunei Darussalam, Tungku Link, Gadong, BE, 1410, Brunei

    T. Ulmar Grafe & Ivonne Meuche

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  1. Wiebke Sickel
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  2. T. Ulmar Grafe
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Correspondence to Alexander Keller.

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Supplemental File 1

Rarefaction curves for each sample. Sub-divided by tissue for visualisation reasons. Black = N. hemsleyana, red = N. rafflesiana, # in Fluid rarefaction indicates N. hemsleyana fluid replicates with observed bat roosting. (PDF 212 kb)

Supplemental File 2

List of all detected taxa. Lineage as well as affiliation to pre-selected groups according to Materials & Methods are provided. (TXT 200 kb)

Supplemental File 3

Mean relative abundance of taxa in clusters; given in mean (SD; median). Mean relative abundance values refer to the mean in the following groups: fluid samples of N. hemsleyana (first column), fluid samples of N. rafflesiana (second column), all other samples (third column). (DOCX 44 kb)

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Sickel, W., Grafe, T.U., Meuche, I. et al. Bacterial Diversity and Community Structure in Two Bornean Nepenthes Species with Differences in Nitrogen Acquisition Strategies. Microb Ecol 71, 938–953 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0723-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0723-3

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