Biology Faculty Articles

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-1-2019

Publication Title

eLife

ISSN

2050-084X

Volume

2019

Issue/No.

8

First Page

e47606

Abstract

Deep-sea anglerfishes are relatively abundant and diverse, but their luminescent bacterial symbionts remain enigmatic. The genomes of two symbiont species have qualities common to vertically transmitted, host-dependent bacteria. However, a number of traits suggest that these symbionts may be environmentally acquired. To determine how anglerfish symbionts are transmitted, we analyzed bacteria-host codivergence across six diverse anglerfish genera. Most of the anglerfish species surveyed shared a common species of symbiont. Only one other symbiont species was found, which had a specific relationship with one anglerfish species, Cryptopsaras couesii. Host and symbiont phylogenies lacked congruence, and there was no statistical support for codivergence broadly. We also recovered symbiont-specific gene sequences from water collected near hosts, suggesting environmental persistence of symbionts. Based on these results we conclude that diverse anglerfishes share symbionts that are acquired from the environment, and that these bacteria have undergone extreme genome reduction although they are not vertically transmitted.

Comments

© 2019, Baker et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Additional Comments

All data are publicly available through NCBI and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at https://data.gulfresearchinitiative.org (doi: 10.7266/N7P55KWX, 10.7266/N7VX0DK2, 10.7266.N7R49NTN, 10.7266.N70P0X3T, 10.7266/N7XP7385, and 10.7266/N7902234) .

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ORCID ID

0000-0002-1637-4125

DOI

10.7554/eLife.47606.001

Peer Reviewed

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