The diversity of the endobiotic bacterial communities in the four jellyfish species

Abstract

The associated microbiota plays an essential role in the life process of jellyfish. The endobiotic bacterial communities from four common jellyfish Phyllorhiza punctata, Cyanea capillata, Chrysaora melanaster, and Aurelia coerulea were comparatively analyzed by 16S rDNA sequencing in this study. Several 1049 OTUs were harvested from a total of 130 183 reads. Tenericutes (68.4%) and Firmicutes (82.1%) are the most abundant phyla in P. punctata and C. melanaster, whereas C. capillata and A. coerulea share the same top phylum Proteobacteria (76.9% vs. 78.3%). The classified OTUs and bacterial abundance greatly decrease from the phylum to genus level. The top 20 matched genera only account for 9.03% of the total community in P. punctata, 48.9% in C. capillata, 83.05% in C. melanaster, and 58.1% in A. coerulea, respectively. The heatmap of the top 50 genera shows that the relative abundances in A. coerulea and C. capillata are far richer than that in P. punctata and C. melanaster. Moreover, a total of 41 predictive functional categories at KEGG level 2 were identified. Our study indicates the independent diversity of the bacterial communities in the four common Scyphomedusae, which might involve in the metabolism and environmental information processing of the hosts.