Microbial communities associated with benthic invertebrates near hydrocarbon and mineral fluid discharge in lake Baikal

Using scanning electron microscopy, the epibiotic associations of peritrichous sessile ciliates of the genus Lagenoprys and prokaryotes of various morphologies on the surface of the Candona sp. ostracods living in the Goloustnoe methane vulture (Lake Baikal) are shown. High-performance sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform showed the presence of bacterial phylums such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, which were dominant, in the microbiome of ostracods. More than 50% of all sequences of the 16S rRNA gene fragment isolated from ostracod DNA were assigned to the genus Rickettsia. For the first time, the presence of representatives of Cardinium endosymbionts in Baikal crustaceans has been shown.