Infection strategies of different chytrids in a diatom spring bloom

Abstract

• Diatom blooms are often accompanied by an increase in parasitic chytrids that kill the host cells, which they are infecting, and can contribute to the decline of the bloom. However, host specificity and range of these chytrids are currently poorly understood.

• Low host specificity would enable the parasites to opportunistically infect any diatom species, while specialisation on infecting specific high‐biomass species could result in high prevalence and rapid spread of infection.

• We investigated such host–parasite interactions by monitoring the diverse diatom spring bloom in lake Erken using amplicon sequencing. We also performed infection experiments with two different, newly isolated chytrid species and several diatom cultures from the bloom.

• Chytridiomycota displayed the highest relative abundance of all parasitic lineages and were probably physically attached to larger organisms. Since the chytrids reached maximum abundance shortly after a peak in diatom reads, they were probably infecting these important primary producers.

• Phylogenetic analyses of the isolated chytrid strains identified them as members of the classes Rhizophydiales and Lobulomycetales. The infection experiments revealed high host specificity in these two chytrids targeting different diatom species. The experimental results supported statistical analyses of the environmental sequencing data, which suggested the presence of two different infection strategies: the most abundant chytrid species were specialised on infecting dominant diatom genera (i.e. Stephanodiscus, Aulacoseira, Asterionella), while rarer chytid species infected a range of less abundant diatoms.