Observations on the Antagonistic Relationships between Fungi, Archaea, and Bacteria in Livingston Island (Maritime Antarctica) with the Use of Amplicon-Based Metagenomics

Abstract

An amplicon-based metagenomic survey of archaea, fungi, and bacteria was performed on Livingston Island, Maritime Antarctica. In many of the samples, patterns of antagonism between these three superkingdoms were observed in the form of an inversely proportional dependence of the richnesses of the three types of microorganisms. The antagonism was quantified—based on the observed numbers of the total tags and the numbers of the operational taxonomic units (OTUs), and on four alpha diversity parameters—using the Shannon, the Simpson, the Chao1, and the ACE indices. We found that the most discriminative results in the antagonism measuring were obtained when the numbers of the OTUs and the ACE community richness estimator were compared. The antagonism between archaea and fungi was most potent, followed by that of archaea and bacteria. The fungi–bacteria antagonism was slightly detectable. Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses also showed a statistically significant negative correlation between the fungal and archaeal effective tags, while the correlation between archaeal and bacterial diversity was positive. Indications of the order of primary microbial succession in barren ecological niches were also observed, demonstrating that archaea and bacteria are the pioneers, followed by fungi, which would displace archaea over time.