Characterization of ecto- and endoparasite communities of wild Mediterranean teleosts by a metabarcoding approach

PLoS One. 2019 Sep 10;14(9):e0221475. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221475. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing methods are increasingly used to identify eukaryotic, unicellular and multicellular symbiont communities within hosts. In this study, we analyzed the non-specific reads obtained during a metabarcoding survey of the bacterial communities associated to three different tissues collected from 13 wild Mediterranean teleost fish species. In total, 30 eukaryotic genera were identified as putative parasites of teleosts, associated to skin mucus, gills mucus and intestine: 2 ascomycetes, 4 arthropods, 2 cnidarians, 7 nematodes, 10 platyhelminthes, 4 apicomplexans, 1 ciliate as well as one order in dinoflagellates (Syndiniales). These results highlighted that (1) the metabarcoding approach was able to uncover a large spectrum of symbiotic organisms associated to the fish species studied, (2) symbionts not yet identified in several teleost species were putatively present, (3) the parasitic diversity differed markedly across host species and (4) in most cases, the distribution of known parasitic genera within tissues is in accordance with the literature. The current work illustrates the large insights that can be gained by making maximum use of data from a metabarcoding approach.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Apicomplexa / genetics
  • Arthropods / genetics
  • Ascomycota / genetics
  • Biodiversity*
  • Ciliophora / genetics
  • DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic / methods
  • Fishes / microbiology
  • Fishes / parasitology*
  • Gills / microbiology
  • Gills / parasitology
  • Intestines / microbiology
  • Intestines / parasitology
  • Metagenome*
  • Metagenomics / methods
  • Nematoda / genetics
  • Skin / microbiology
  • Skin / parasitology
  • Symbiosis

Grants and funding

This research was supported by Sorbonne Universités programme Emergence 2016, SU-16-R-EMR-22-MICROFISH to YD, SD. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.