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Exploring benthic cyanobacterial diversity and co-occurring potentially harmful dinoflagellates in six islands of the South Pacific

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Abstract

Cyanobacteria represent a potential risk to human health, as they can produce an array of toxic compounds. Proliferations of potentially toxic benthic marine cyanobacteria are predicted to increase in frequency and spread geographically with climate change and eutrophication, especially in tropical lagoons. Benthic cyanobacterial mats harbour many species of other bacteria and eukaryotic organisms, some of which have been linked to human poisonings after consumption of contaminated seafood. Metabarcoding was used to characterize the taxonomic diversity of 66 benthic cyanobacteria-dominated mats collected from six islands in three different countries of the South Pacific: French Polynesia, the Cook Islands and Kingdom of Tonga. Twenty-five potentially toxic cyanobacteria genera were recorded. Although core bacterial communities (excluding cyanobacteria) remained constant amongst mats, there were significant differences both within and between islands, even when the mats were dominated by the same cyanobacteria genera. Dinoflagellata and Ciliophora were the most dominant eukaryotes and seven potentially toxic genera of dinoflagellates co-occurred in the mats. This is the first baseline survey to use metabarcoding to demonstrate the co-occurrence of potentially toxic marine cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates in the Pacific. The results highlight that further research is needed to evaluate the toxicity of the mats in these regions.

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Data availability

Raw sequences generated during and/or analysed during the current study were submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information Sequence Read Archive under the BioProject ID number PRJNA656630.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge; Olivier Laroche (Cawthron Institute) for running the DADA2 pipeline for the bioinformatics analyses, John Pearman (Cawthron Institute) for his help with the data analysis, Lesley Rhodes (Cawthron Institute) for reviewing the manuscript and help with interpreting the results, and Mayalen Zubia (Université de la Polynésie française) for her help during field expeditions in French Polynesia. The authors also thank Phoebe Argyle (University of Technology Sydney) and Rowan Strickland for their help with sampling in the Kingdom of Tonga and Aitutaki, respectively.

Funding

The present work was supported by fund from France in the framework of the “CYANOTOX” project (Fonds Pacifique, no. AFD CPF 1440 01 N of 22 December 2016), and by the MBIE-funded Safe New Zealand Seafood research programme (contract No.: CAWX1801). In French Polynesia, field expeditions at Moorea and Nuku Hiva Islands were supported by funds from France and French Polynesia in the framework of the “CARISTO-Pf” project (no. 7937/MSR/REC of 4 December 2015 and Arrêté no. HC/491/DIE/BPT of 30 March 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coastal and Freshwater Group, Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand

    Laura Biessy, Susanna A. Wood & Kirsty F. Smith

  2. Institut Louis Malardé, UMR EIO, Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia

    Mireille Chinain

  3. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR EIO, Faa’a, Tahiti, French Polynesia

    Mélanie Roué

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  1. Laura Biessy
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KS, SW, MR and MC conceived and designed the research. MR, MC, KS, SW collected samples; LB conducted experiments, analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors read, edited and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Laura Biessy.

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Biessy, L., Wood, S.A., Chinain, M. et al. Exploring benthic cyanobacterial diversity and co-occurring potentially harmful dinoflagellates in six islands of the South Pacific. Hydrobiologia 848, 2815–2829 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04599-6

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