Genome evolution following an ecological shift in nectar-dwelling .

Unlabelled: The bacterial genus includes species found in environmental habitats like soil and water, as well as taxa adapted to be host-associated or pathogenic. High genetic diversity may allow for this habitat flexibility, but the specific genes underlying switches between habitats are poorly understood. One lineage of has undergone a substantial habitat change by evolving from a presumed soil-dwelling ancestral state to thrive in floral nectar.

Host response to Aplysia Abyssovirus 1 in nervous system and gill.

The California sea hare (Aplysia californica) is a model for age associated cognitive decline. Recent researched identified a novel nidovirus, Aplysia Abyssovirus 1, with broad tropism enriched in the Aplysia nervous system. This virus is ubiquitous in wild and maricultured, young and old animals without obvious pathology.

Revealing General Patterns of Microbiomes That Transcend Systems: Potential and Challenges of Deep Transfer Learning.

A growing body of research has established that the microbiome can mediate the dynamics and functional capacities of diverse biological systems. Yet, we understand little about what governs the response of these microbial communities to host or environmental changes. Most efforts to model microbiomes focus on defining the relationships between the microbiome, host, and environmental features within a specified study system and therefore fail to capture those that may be evident across multiple systems.

The coral symbiont Candidatus Aquarickettsia is variably abundant in threatened Caribbean acroporids and transmitted horizontally.

The symbiont "Candidatus Aquarickettsia rohweri" infects a diversity of aquatic hosts. In the threatened Caribbean coral, Acropora cervicornis, Aquarickettsia proliferates in response to increased nutrient exposure, resulting in suppressed growth and increased disease susceptibility and mortality of coral. This study evaluated the extent, as well as the ecology and evolution of Aquarickettsia infecting threatened corals, Ac.

sp. nov., sp. nov. and sp. nov., isolated from floral nectar and honey bees.

A detailed evaluation of eight bacterial isolates from floral nectar and animal visitors to flowers shows evidence that they represent three novel species in the genus . Phylogenomic analysis shows the closest relatives of these new isolates are , and , previously described species associated with floral nectar and bees, but high genome-wide sequence divergence defines these isolates as novel species. Pairwise comparisons of the average nucleotide identity of the new isolates compared to known species is extremely low (<83 %), thus confirming that these samples are representative of three novel species, for which the names sp.

Bacterial inoculations can perturb the growth trajectory of diatoms with an existing microbiome.

Inoculation of axenic diatom monocultures with individual bacterial strains has been used effectively to examine the relationship between bacteria and a diatom host. Both beneficial and harmful effects on diatom fitness have been observed. Yet, diatoms commonly host a consortium of bacteria that could influence their response to perturbation by bacterial inoculations.

Diverse deep-sea anglerfishes share a genetically reduced luminous symbiont that is acquired from the environment.

Deep-sea anglerfishes are relatively abundant and diverse, but their luminescent bacterial symbionts remain enigmatic. The genomes of two symbiont species have qualities common to vertically transmitted, host-dependent bacteria. However, a number of traits suggest that these symbionts may be environmentally acquired.

Response of diatom-associated bacteria to host growth state, nutrient concentrations, and viral host infection in a model system.

Diatoms are photosynthetic unicellular eukaryotes found ubiquitously in aquatic systems. Frequent physical associations with other microorganisms such as bacteria may influence diatom fitness. The predictability of bacterial-diatom interactions is hypothesized to depend on availability of nutrients as well as the physiological state of the host.

Filling gaps in biodiversity knowledge for macrofungi: contributions and assessment of an herbarium collection DNA barcode sequencing project.

Despite recent advances spearheaded by molecular approaches and novel technologies, species description and DNA sequence information are significantly lagging for fungi compared to many other groups of organisms. Large scale sequencing of vouchered herbarium material can aid in closing this gap. Here, we describe an effort to obtain broad ITS sequence coverage of the approximately 6000 macrofungal-species-rich herbarium of the Museum of Natural History in Venice, Italy.