‘It’s complicated’ – seagrass and fungi

Fungi have significant positive and negative impacts on terrestrial angiosperms, however analogous marine relationships are poorly documented. This research aimed to characterise the mycobiome of Zostera marina using molecular methods including Sanger sequencing and phylogenetic reconstruction.

A noteworthy finding of this work was that fungal community structure varied both within and between plant parts –tissues hosted much different taxonomic orders, some of which were novel. They also found the mycobiome had relatively low diversity and put forward several hypotheses to postulate why, from high salinity, low oxygen, seasonality to antimicrobial compounds produced by Z. marina.  

Overall this work highlighted the complexities of studying marine fungi and its associations with angiosperms, though the blue sky nature of this work is important to progress knowledge in the field. Z. marina certainly host distinct fungal communities, the function and mechanisms of this relationship remain to be fully understood.

Ettinger, C.L., Eisen, J.A. (2019) Characterization of the mycobiome of the seagrass, Zostera marina, reveals putative associations with marine chytrids. Frontiers in Microbiology, 10(2476).