Finding microbial composition and biological processes as predictive signature to access the ongoing status of mangrove preservation.

Mangroves are complex land-sea transition ecosystems whose microbiota are essential for their nutrient recycling and conservation. Brazil is the third-largest estuarine area in the world and "Baía de Todos os Santos" (BTS) is one of the largest bays of the country, with wide anthropogenic exploration. Using a metagenomic approach, we investigated composition and functional adaptability as signatures of the microbiome of pristine and anthropized areas of BTS, including those under petroleum refinery influence. The taxonomic analysis showed dominance of sulfate-reducing Desulfobacteraceae, Rhodobacteraceae, and Flavobacteriaceae. Taxa were significantly diverse between pristine and disturbed areas. Disturbed mangroves showed a notary increase in abundance of halophilic, sulfur-related, and hydrocarbon-degrading genera and a decrease in diatoms compared to pristine area. The metabolic profile of BTS mangroves was correlated with the differentially abundant microbiota. Two ecological scenarios were observed: one marked by functions of central metabolism associated with biomass degradation and another by mechanisms of microbial adaptability to pollution conditions and environmental degradation. Part of the microbiome was distinct and not abundant in Brazilian estuarine soils. The microbiome signature observed in each BTS mangrove reflects how human actions impact the diversity of these ecosystems and also emphasize their role in attempting to restore disturbed mangroves. The microbiome may act as a potential biological indicator of the preservation status of these soils, despite the limitation of soil property conditions. Additionally, our data pointed to metagenomics as an additional tool for environmental assessment and reinforced the need for protective measures for the mangroves under study.

Molecular analyses of carangid fish diets reveal inter-predation, dietary overlap, and the importance of early life stages in trophic ecology.

Carangid fishes are commercially important in fisheries and aquaculture. They are distributed worldwide in both tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems. Their role in food webs is often unclear since their diet cannot be easily identified by traditional gut content analysis. They are suspected to prey on pelagic and benthic species, with clupeiform fishes being important dietary items for some species, though it is unknown whether carangids share food resources or show trophic segregation. Here, we used metabarcoding to overcome traditional challenges of taxonomic approaches to analyze the diet of seven carangid species caught as bycatch in the Brazilian southwest Atlantic sardine fishery. Stomach contents were processed from the following species: Caranx crysos, Caranx latus, Chloroscombrus chrysurus, Hemicaranx amblyrhynchus, Oligoplites saliens, Selene setapinnis, and Trachinotus carolinus. Identified diets were dominated by teleost fishes. The C. latus diet was the most distinct among the seven species, preferentially consuming Engraulis anchoita, but H. amblyrhynchus, O. saliens, and S. setapinnis also showed a trend of predominantly consuming small pelagic fishes. Finally, we found evidence of inter-predation in carangids, especially strong between S. setapinnis and C. crysos, suggesting that consumption of early life stages may result in indirect competition through reduced recruitment in these fishes. These findings provide unprecedented insights into the biodiversity in marine ecosystems, especially the poorly known diet of carangid fishes.

The Raphidiopsis (= Cylindrospermopsis) raciborskii pangenome updated: Two new metagenome-assembled genomes from the South American clade.

Two Raphidiopsis (=Cylindrospermopsis) raciborskii metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) were recovered from two freshwater metagenomic datasets sampled in 2011 and 2012 in Pampulha Lake, a hypereutrophic, artificial, shallow reservoir, located in the city of Belo Horizonte (MG), Brazil. Since the late 1970s, the lake has undergone increasing eutrophication pressure, due to wastewater input, leading to the occurrence of frequent cyanobacterial blooms. The major difference observed between PAMP2011 and PAMP2012 MAGs was the lack of the saxitoxin gene cluster in PAMP2012, which also presented a smaller genome, while PAMP2011 presented the complete sxt cluster and all essential proteins and clusters. The pangenome analysis was performed with all Raphidiopsis/Cylindrospermopsis genomes available at NCBI to date, with the addition of PAMP2011 and PAMP2012 MAGs (All33 subset), but also without the South American strains (noSA subset), and only among the South American strains (SA10 and SA8 subsets). We observed a substantial increase in the core genome size for the 'noSA' subset, in comparison to 'All33' subset, and since the core genome reflects the closeness among the pangenome members, the results strongly suggest that the conservation level of the essential gene repertoire seems to be affected by the geographic origin of the strains being analyzed, supporting the existence of a distinct SA clade. The Raphidiopsis pangenome comprised a total of 7943 orthologous protein clusters, and the two new MAGs increased the pangenome size by 11%. The pangenome based phylogenetic relationships among the 33 analyzed genomes showed that the SA genomes clustered together with 99% bootstrap support, reinforcing the metabolic particularity of the Raphidiopsis South American clade, related to its saxitoxin producing unique ability, while also indicating a different evolutionary history due to its geographic isolation.

New plastomes of eight Ipomoea species and four putative hybrids from Eastern Amazon.

Ipomoea is a large pantropical genus globally distributed, which importance goes beyond the economic value as food resources or ornamental crops. This highly diverse genus has been the focus of a great number of studies, enriching the plant genomics knowledge, and challenging the plant evolution models. In the Carajás mountain range, located in Eastern Amazon, the savannah-like ferruginous ecosystem known as canga harbors highly specialized plant and animal populations, and Ipomoea is substantially representative in such restrictive habitat. Thus, to provide genetic data and insights into whole plastome phylogenetic relationships among key Ipomoea species from Eastern Amazon with little to none previously available data, we present the complete plastome sequences of twelve lineages of the genus, including the canga microendemic I. cavalcantei, the closely related I. marabaensis, and their putative hybrids. The twelve plastomes presented similar gene content as most publicly available Ipomoea plastomes, although the putative hybrids were correctly placed as closely related to the two parental species. The cavalcantei-marabaensis group was consistently grouped between phylogenetic methods. The closer relationship of the I. carnea plastome with the cavalcantei-marabaensis group, as well as the branch formed by I. quamoclit, I. asarifolia and I. maurandioides, were probably a consequence of insufficient taxonomic representativity, instead of true genetic closeness, reinforcing the importance of new plastome assemblies to resolve inconsistencies and boost statistical confidence, especially the case for South American clades of Ipomoea. The search for k-mers presenting high dispersion among the frequency distributions pointed to highly variable coding and intergenic regions, which may potentially contribute to the genetic diversity observed at species level. Our results contribute to the resolution of uncertain clades within Ipomoea and future phylogenomic studies, bringing unprecedented results to Ipomoea species with restricted distribution, such as I. cavalcantei.