Abstract
Fungal communities from gorgonians have been poorly documented and most studies of these communities have lacked defined sampling strategies. The objectives of this study were: (1) to estimate fungal diversity in Gorgonia ventalina; (2) to compare two sampling and tissue processing strategies: tissue fragments of different sizes vs. homogenized tissue. A total of seven genera and fourteen species of fungi were isolated on culture medium and identified by sequencing the nrITS. All but one species were new reports. In both treatments Aspergillus and Penicillium were the most common genera isolated. Most species isolated from fragments were not observed from homogenized tissue and vice versa. Reducing the size fragment increased significantly the number of species isolated per fragment. To better estimate fungal diversity in sea fans a strategy is proposed that combines sampling of small tissue fragments with homogenized tissue, since each technique yielded fungal species not detected by the other.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported by UPR Sea Grant (NOAA award NA16RG2278, project R-92-1-04) and an NIH SCoRE award. CTH thanks the RISE -NIH program for a research fellowship (2 R25 GM061151) and the International Society for Reef Studies (ISRS) for an ISRS/TOC Coral Reef Conservation Award (2006). We thank Miguel A. Gamboa and Anabella Zuluaga for advice on the manuscript. Sequencing was done at the UPR Sequencing & Genotyping Facility, which is funded by a grant from IMBRE.
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Toledo-Hernández, C., Bones-González, A., Ortiz-Vázquez, O.E. et al. Fungi in the sea fan Gorgonia ventalina: diversity and sampling strategies. Coral Reefs 26, 725–730 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-007-0252-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-007-0252-8