Sample description, behaviour, and collection of plant samples
The endophytic bacterial populations and their dynamic nature were studied on mango and its two hemiparasitic plants, Loranthus parasiticus (L.) Merr. and Macrosolen colchinchinensis (Lour.) Tiegh (Family: Loranthaceae). The primary host plant mango (Mangifera indica L., Anacardiaceae) is the national fruit of India, Haiti, Fillipines, and the national tree of Bangladesh, a tropical tree with juicy drupe fruit. The plant has flowering seasons starts from the end of the winter in the tropical region, i.e., the end of January to March. The hemiparasite plants Loranthus sp., Macrosolen sp. are commonly grown on the branches of mature-aged mango plants. In this study, the sampling was done where both the hemiparasites infested the host mango plant, and the sampling time was done during the pre-flowering seasons and post-flowering seasons of mango plants. The leaf and stem samples of mango and its hemiparasites were collected from a selected mango plant with hemiparasites from the mango orchard of the Malda district, West Bengal, India (24.9624 ºN, 88.1823 ºE; Figure 1) and were carried out DNA extraction and sequence analysis.
Taxonomic composition analysis
The taxonomic diversity of all the sequences of the two seasons and the three hosts were classified from phylum to genus according to the default QIIME v1.9.1 program. More than 340,200 reads with GC% <50% were considered in each host plant during each host and season. There were 11 different phyla, 14 classes, 17 orders, 21 families, and 22 genera (Figure S2). There were a large percentage of OTUs were from unidentified and uncultured populations. The population variations of the endophytic bacterial community were evident with the seasonal variations. On the overall account of the two seasons and three hosts, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Cyanobacteria, and Bacteroidetes were the five most dominant phyla carrying 99.48% of the total reads while the rest phylum is containing 0.52% reads only. Among the top five phyla, Proteobacteria (38.04%) are the most dominant, followed by Actinobacteria (25.03%), Firmicutes (17.97%), Cyanobacteria (15.56%), and Bacteroidetes (2.88%) (Figure S2a, b). The total unculturable communities possessed total 21 families, and among them, 60.83% belong to the major 5 families, and the other 16 families contain the rest 39.17% reads. These major 5 families were Bacillaceae (27.56%), Moraxellaceae (15.76%), Corynebacteriaceae (6.76%), Propionibacteriaceae (6.08%), Acetobacteraceae (4.65%) (Figure 2a, Figure S2c, d). Among the unculturable genera, the top 5 reads share 69.2% reads which contain Bacillus (32.46%), Acinetobacter (20.12%), Corynebacterium (6.36%), Actinomycetospora (5.99%), Methylobacterium (4.27%) (Figure 2b, Figure S2e, f). These observations showed that although many reads were left unidentified, diverse numbers of reads were present in each taxon from phylum to genera.
Ecological diversity of the microbial populations in hosts and seasonal variations
The ecological diversity from the represented percentages of bacterial OTUs was assessed by measuring ecological dominance, evenness, alpha, and beta diversity indices (Figure 3). The maximum dominance of families (0.319) and genus (0.4329) were showed in the Macrosolen sp. during the pre-flowering season of mango and lowest in Loranthus sp. in both families (0.1528) and genus (0.1879) during the post-flowering season of mango (Figure 3a, e). The ecological evenness was reciprocal to the ecological dominance because ecological dominance and evenness are always inversely proportional (Figure 3b, f). The Simpson index (D) among the family's OTUs was highest in the Loranthus sp. (0.8472) at post-flowering seasons of mango and followed by both Macrosolen sp. (0.8443), mango (0.8413), respectively at the same season. The lowest family diversity index (D) was Macrosolen sp. (0.681) at the pre-flowering season of mango. The Shannon index (H) of alpha diversity was highest in the Loranthus sp. (1.931) at pre-flowering seasons of mango and lowest in Macrosolen sp. (1.526) at the pre-flowering seasons of mango (Figure 3c). The beta diversity (Cody index) of all three hosts and two seasons were 17.5, and the individual analysis of Bray-Curtis dissimilarities explained that the highest beta diversity was present in the Staphylococcaceae members, resides in the Loranthus plant (0.72987) at the pre-flowering season of mango followed by Streptococcaceae in Macrosolen plant (0.68117) at the post-flowering season of mango. The lowest Bray-Curtis dissimilarities were observed in the Bacillaceae family in the mango plant (-0.45372) at pre-flowering seasons of mango, followed by Moraxallaceae in the mango plant (-0.42564) at the same season. The majority of the families belong to the dissimilarity indices between 0.41 to -0.31 (Figure 3d). From the genera point of view, the Simpson diversity indices (D) of the representative genera of bacterial endophytes were highest in Loranthus sp. (0.8121) during post-flowering seasons of mango followed by Macrosolen sp. (0.7755) at the same season. The lowest bacterial genus diversity index (D) was Macrosolen sp. (0.5671) at the pre-flowering season of mango. The Shannon index (H) of alpha diversity was highest in the Loranthus sp. (1.732) at post-flowering seasons of mango, followed by Macrosolen sp. (1.55) of the same season and lowest in Macrosolen sp. (1.242) at the pre-flowering season of mango (Figure 3g). The beta diversity (Cody index) of all three hosts and two seasons were 12. The individual analysis of Bray-Curtis dissimilarities explained that the highest beta diversity was present in the Spirosoma and Hymenobacter members, resides in mango and Loranthus sp. (0.56438 and 0.53773, respectively) at post-flowering and pre-flowering seasons of mango, respectively followed by Sphingomonas (0.49389) and Bacillus (0.48738) in Macrosolen plant at pre-flowering and post-flowering seasons of mango. The lowest Bray-Curtis dissimilarities were observed in Actinomycetospora in Loranthus sp. (-0.55908) at pre-flowering seasons of mango followed by Cutibacterium in the same host (-0.45184) at the same season. The majority of the genera belonging to the dissimilarity indices between 0.45794 to -0.39786 (Figure 3h). The Bray-Curtis dissimilarities indicate a wide range of dissimilarity indices because of the restricted relative abundance of the representative taxa (both families and genera). Additionally, most taxa have positive dissimilarity indices due to their absence or minimum relative abundance in their respective hosts and seasons. The ecological dominance (df=17, p>0.05) was statistically insignificant, whereas the ecological evenness was significant (df=17, p<0.05) differences in different hosts and seasons. The ANOVA studies of alpha diversity showed statistically insignificant differences in both Simpson (df=17, p>0.05) and Shannon diversity indices (df=17, p>0.05). This result indicates that depending on variable diversity indices, the significance may vary. The beta diversity of both family (df=125, p>0.05) and genus (df=89, p>0.05) rank showed insignificant variations. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NM-MDS) of the bacterial community analysis showed that the family and genera of the two seasons were intermingled between each other and distributed almost equally throughout the axis (Figure 4a, b). This observation indicates that the bacterial community was dispersed from the entire plot to the mid axis, i.e., the bacterial community is dispersed during the different seasons of mango.
Microbial community distribution
The majority of the phylum were present in both pre-flowering and post-flowering seasons. The microbial community dynamics between the three host plants in the seasonal variation are a significant subject of inquisition. Several endophytic bacterial phylum, families, and genera were present within the plant systems that were shifted between the hosts in the different seasonal variations (Figure S3, S4; Table 1, 2; Table S1, S2). The maximum fold increase found in the case of the relative abundance of Firmicutes (>9.5 folds) followed by Actinobacteria during the pre-flowering season compared to the post-flowering season (Table 1). Furthermore, the abundance of endophytic bacterial phyla were maximum in Macrosolen than in mango and Loranthus (Table 2). The genera Bacillus resides in the mango and Loranthus sp. They were multiplied and disseminated in the three hosts (Figure S3, Table S2). In contrast, Actinomycetospora resided in the Macrosolen plant in the pre-flowering season disseminated in all three hosts during the post-flowering season. Another genus, Streptococcus present in the Loranthus sp. during the pre-flowering season and is disseminated in Loranthus sp. and Macrosolen sp. during the post-flowering season. (Table S2). Similarly, the family Bacillaceae resides in all three hosts during the post-flowering season in lesser abundance, increasing several-fold during the pre-flowering season. Propionibacteriaceae, another family in mango as a primary reservoir in post-flowering season, were disseminated in each host during the pre-flowering season. In contrast, Pseudonocardiaceae resided in the Macrosolen sp. during the pre-flowering season and were disseminated in Loranthus sp. and Macrosolen sp. (Table S1). Rest families and genera were found to be the host and season-specific instead of having any shift in abundance between seasonal or host variations (Figure S3, S4). From these observations, it can be stated that specific endophytic populations were shifted between the three plants on seasonal variations from the respective reservoir hosts. Macrosolen acted as a reservoir of the endophytic bacterial community and Loranthus in both the pre-and post-flowering season of mango. So, most bacterial communities were shifted from hemiparasites to host mango plants during their favourite seasons. The Venn diagram also showed that the endophytic bacterial community was disseminated throughout the three hosts during the pre-flowering season of mango because maximum (45.5% families or 57.1% genera) endophytic bacterial taxon was present in all the three hosts (Figure 5). The UPGMA showed that the endophytic populations were more similar between these two hemiparasites plants than mango, and that is why mango belongs to a separate clade with 100 bootstrap values (Figure S5). This analysis also reflects the similar postulate that the hemiparasites commonly act as a reservoir of the endophytic community, and when the environment becomes favourable, they disseminate in mango plants.
Characterization of potential pathogens in endophytic communities
The pathogenic potency to develop pathogenicity in the host plants was estimated (Table 3) from the previously published literature. It was observed that many of the endophytic genera present predominantly in the hemiparasite plants as the reservoir system (Figure S5). However, when the favourable condition occurs, such as summer and rainy season, they (Bacillus, Corynebacterium, Staphylococcus) were disseminated to the mango plant and potentially caused diseases such as wilt and rotting of fruits, roots, etc. (Agrios 2005; Vidaver 1982; Prithiviraj et al. 2005).