Microbial Diversity of Georgia USA Rays

Comparing co-occurring species may provide insights into how aspects of ecology may play a role in influencing their microbial communities. During the 2019 commercial shrimp trawl season off coastal Georgia, swabs of skin, gills, cloaca, and gut were taken for three species of batoids, Butterfly Ray, Bluntnose Stingray, and Atlantic Stingray, and one shark species, Atlantic Sharpnose, for high-throughput sequencing of the V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. When examined within tissue type, the host species had a weak effect on beta-diversity for cloaca and skin, with no differences found for gill and gut samples. However, network analysis metrics demonstrated a stronger species-specific effect and distinct microbial community relationships were apparent between the shark and batoids, with the former having tighter networks for both internally and externally influenced tissues, gut and cloaca and skin and gills, respectively. Despite overlapping habitat use, species microbiomes differed in their organizational structuring that paralleled differences in stable isotope results, suggesting a mediating role of species-specific ecology on bacterial microbiomes.