Bonthond, Guido , Bayer, Till , Krueger-Hadfield, Stacy and Weinberger, Florian (2021) Host Promiscuity Promotes Invasiveness of the Rhodophyte Agarophyton Vermiculophyllum. [Talk] In: 12th International Phycological Congress. , 22.-26.03.2021, Puerto Montt, Chile ; p. 41 . Phycologia, 60, Suppl.1 .

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Abstract

Invasive species are holobionts and during the invasion process they are accompanied by associated microbiota. In the course of the introduction process extreme conditions during transport and exposure to different conditions in a novel environment may induce holobiont disturbance. Upon introduction, the macroalgal holobiont interacts with microbiota from the new environment and reconfigures new functional microbial communities. As not all microbes may have survived, microbiota from the new environment may replace certain microbes from the native environment. Therefore, flexibility of the seaweed host towards environmental microbiota –or host promiscuity– may be an important trait in macroalgal invasions. Here, we simulated an introduction event in an experimental setting, using the invasive macroalga Agarophyton vermiculophyllum as a model. Individuals from geographically distant populations were transplanted to a common garden in the lab and subjected to a holobiont disturbance treatment followed by exposure to a new source of microbes. This treatment induced strong changes in associated microbiota, which shifted irreversibly in terms of composition and diversity, but recovered functionally in most respects. Moreover, beta-diversity strongly decreased in treated holobionts, indicating that different populations configured more common microbial communities in the common garden. In non-native populations this decline was more rapid and more pronounced, while microbial communities of native populations remained more similar to communities observed in the field. These results demonstrate that non-native A. vermiculophyllum are more flexible to environmental microbes, suggesting that an intra-specific increase in host promiscuity may have promoted the invasion process of A. vermiculophyllum.

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