Data from: The core microbiome bonds the Alpine bog vegetation to a transkingdom metacommunity

Bog ecosystems fulfil important functions in Earth's carbon and water
turnover. While plant communities and their keystone species Sphagnum have
been well studied, less is known about the microbial communities
associated with them. To study our hypothesis that bog plants share an
essential core of their microbiome despite their different phylogenetic
origins, we analysed four plant community plots with 24 bryophytes,
vascular plants and lichen species in two Alpine bogs in Austria by 16S
rDNA amplicon sequencing followed by bioinformatic analyses. The overall
bog microbiome was classified into 32 microbial phyla, while
Proteobacteria (30.8%), Verrucomicrobia (20.3%) and Planctomycetes (15.1%)
belonged to the most abundant groups. Interestingly, the archaeal phylum
Euryarcheota represented 7.2% of total microbial abundance. However, a
high portion of micro-organisms remained unassigned at phylum and class
level, respectively. The core microbiome of the bog vegetation contained
177 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) (150 526 seq.) and contributed to
49.5% of the total microbial abundance. Only a minor portion of associated
core micro-organisms was host specific for examined plant groups
(5.9–11.6%). Using our new approach to analyse plant–microbial communities
in an integral framework of ecosystem, vegetation and microbiome, we
demonstrated that bog vegetation harboured a core microbiome that is
shared between plants and lichens over the whole ecosystem and formed a
transkingdom metacommunity. All micro- and macro-organisms are connected
to keystone Sphagnum mosses via set of microbial species, for example
Burkholderia bryophila which was found associated with a wide spectrum of
host plants and is known for a beneficial plant–microbe interaction.