Bark microbiota modulate climate-active gas fluxes in Australian forests

The global surface area of tree bark is approximately equal to the total global land surface area. Though recent studies suggest microbes inhabit tree bark, little is known about their identities, functions, and environmental roles. Here, we reveal, through genome-resolved metagenomics, that tree bark hosts abundant and specialized microbial communities. The predominant bacteria are hydrogen-cycling facultative anaerobes adapted to dynamic redox and substrate conditions. Furthermore, bark-associated methanotrophs are abundant and can coexist with hydrogenotrophic methanogens. Microcosm experiments demonstrated that bark microorganisms rapidly aerobically consume methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide at in planta concentrations, but can produce these gases under anoxia. Combined with in situ field measurements, we show tree-dwelling microbiota process multiple climate-active gases at significant rates within tree stems, highlighting an important research frontier within global atmospher..., , , # Data from: Bark microbiota modulate climate-active gas fluxes in Australian forests

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.ttdz08m9w](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ttdz08m9w)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data includes all multiple sequence alignment and maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree files reported in the Science publication \"Bark microbiota modulate climate-active gas fluxes in Australian forests\".

### Files and variables

#### File: Fig_3E._McrA_with_ref2_mafft_linsi.fasta

**Description:** Multiple sequence alignment of methyl-CoM reductase (McrA) sequences from unbinned contigs dereplicated at 97% identity and aligned using MAFFT-L-INS-i v7.505. This file was used to produce Fig. 3E.

#### File: Fig_3E._McrA_with_ref2_mafft_linsi.fasta.contree

**Description:** Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of methyl-CoM reductase (McrA) constructed using IQTREE2 v2.2.0 (LG+I+G4 model; 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates, -bnni). This file was used to produce Fig. 3E.

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