The relative abundances of yeasts attractive to Drosophila suzukii differ between fruit types and are greatest on raspberries
Six biological replicates each were sampled from four fruit species (blueberries, cherries, raspberries, and strawberries) at four developmental stages. Developmental stages were based on fruit pigmentation ranging from unripe (green) to fully ripe (red/purple/navy; Fig. S1) throughout June to September in 2018. Ten fruits (except blueberries N = 20) were collected for each species per replicate, and this was replicated six times for each ripening stage for each fruit at different sites.Quantitative analysis of fungal communitiesMetabarcoding analysis is generally not quantitative, but the addition of 265 P. cucumerina cells to sub-samples prior to DNA extraction served as an internal standard to attempt an estimation of the size of fungal populations. One replicate spiked with the internal standard of the strawberry stage 3 samples was removed due to poor sequence quality leaving 96 non-spiked and 95 spiked samples which produced a total of 38,445,395 reads that clustered into 1712 > 97% identity Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASV), which from here-in we call phylotypes (Table S1). Blast searches across all phylotypes for matches to the P. cucumerina internal standard’s ITS sequence generated from Sanger sequencing revealed one phylotype that matched with 100% identity. Plectosphaerella cucumerina was naturally present in 21 of the 95 non-spiked samples and comprised of a total of 444 reads. Cherry was the only fruit where the internal standard was reliably recovered: 23 of 24 spiked samples and only one of 24 non-spiked samples contained the internal standard phylotype. After internal standard DNA read normalisation, the mean (± SE) number of fungal cells from each of the useable 23 pairs of cherry replicates was 307,323 (± 39,090) cells. The range of phylotype cell abundance across all cherry samples was 3.9 million for an Aureobasidium phylotype to 3 cells for a phylotype taxonomically assigned no higher level than kingdom. There was no significant change in total fungal cell numbers across cherry maturation stage (Kruskal–Wallis, chi-squared = 2.63, P = 0.45; Fig. S2), but fruit surface areas also increased significantly (Kruskal–Wallis, chi-squared = 19.70, P = 0.0002, Fig. S2). When cell numbers were normalised for surface area this revealed that absolute fungal population sizes remained static across cherry maturation stages (Kruskal–Wallis, chi-squared = 2.49, P = 0.48; Fig. 1A). However, there was a significant change in absolute Saccharomycetales cell numbers when normalised for cherry surface area across maturation (Kruskal–Wallis, chi-squared = 15.30, P = 0.002): stage 1 had significantly greater absolute Saccharomycetales cell numbers than stage 4 (P = 0.0007; Fig. 1B). Six individual Saccharomycetales yeast phylotypes from the genera Debaryomyces, Saccharomyces, Kodamaea, one from the family Pichiaceae, and phylotypes with > 97% homology to M. pulcherrima and Metschnikowia gruessii, had significantly greater abundances on ripening stage 1 than 4 (P values span 0.045 to 0.006).Figure 1Absolute fungal cell abundances on cherry epicarp. Number of total fungal (A) and Saccharomycetales yeasts (B) cells per mm2 of cherry epicarp (N = 6 except, stage 3 and 4, N = 5) at four ripening stages (1, unripe/green fruit; 2, de-greening fruit; 3, ripening fruit; and 4, fully ripe/harvest fruit) estimated from DNA read abundances normalised to DNA abundances from the deliberate addition of 265 live Plectosphaerella cucumerina cells prior to DNA extraction. Different lower-case letters above bars show significant differences between ripening stages at P > 0.05, Dunn’s comparisons post-hoc with Benjamini–Hochberg multiple comparison correction.Full size imageOverview of fungal diversity across all fruit samplesThe P. cucumerina internal standard phylotype was removed from all samples, and the sequence data normalised and analysed. A total of 1712 fungal phylotypes was revealed, comprising seven phyla, 25 classes, 96 orders, 197 families, and 280 genera. The most abundant and diverse phylum was Ascomycota, comprising 92.2% of reads and 57.3% of phylotypes, followed by Basidiomycota (7.7% reads and 33.6% phylotypes), Zygomycota (0.1% and 1.1%), Chytridiomycota ( > 0.1% and 0.7%), Mucoromycota ( > 0.1% and 0.3%), Glomeromycota and Rozellomycota (both > 0.1% and 0.1%; Fig. S3A). A phylotype from the Cladosporium genus was the most common phylotype across all samples, comprising 60.8% of reads. A total of 87 phylotypes from the order Saccharomycetales (budding yeasts) was detected, comprising 1,792,782 DNA reads (4.7% of the total) spanning 10 families and 25 genera. Metschnikowia was the most abundant Saccharomycetales genus (40.0% of Saccharomycetales reads), followed by Hanseniaspora (38.2%), then Pichia (5.2%), with the remaining genera contributing fewer than 3% each. Candida was the most diverse genus within the order Saccharomycetales accounting for 21.8% of phylotypes, despite only comprising 2.4% of reads, followed by Metschnikowia (11.5%), Hanseniaspora (8.0%) and Pichia (6.9%), with each of the remaining genera contributing fewer than 3.5% of phylotypes each (Fig. S3B). The most common Saccharomycetales yeast across all samples was a phylotype from the genus Hanseniaspora with > 97% homology to H. uvarum and comprised 38.2% of the total Saccharomycetales reads (Fig. S3B).The effect of fruit species and ripening stage on epicarp fungal communitiesWe analysed differences in three biodiversity metrics to evaluate the effect of fruit species and maturation stage on fungal communities: differences in the absolute numbers of phylotypes (richness); differences in the types of phylotypes (i.e. presences/absences); and differences in the relative abundances of phylotypes (community composition) following Morrison-Whittle et al.14 and Morrison‐Whittle and Goddard37.
Fungal phylotype richnessPhylotype richness was not normally distributed (Shapiro-Wilks, P = 0.008) but square root transformation allowed the data to conform to the assumptions of ANOVA. There was a significant effect of both fruit type and ripening stage on the number of fungal phylotypes, including an interaction between the two (F3,175 = 18.58, P = 1.65 × 10–10; F3,175 = 5.00, P = 0.002 and F9,175 = 6.69, P = 3.25 × 10–8 respectively). Comparisons of effect sizes revealed fruit type (ω2 = 0.30) had a 4.4 times greater effect than ripening stage (ω2 = 0.068) on fungal phylotype richness. Disregarding ripening stage, cherry (mean ± SE number of phylotypes = 98 ± 4.1) had significantly more fungal phylotypes than blueberry (68 ± 3.7), raspberry (72 ± 2.9) and strawberry (76 ± 3.2) (Tukey’s HSD, P 0.05) and there was a significant effect of ripening stage on the number of fungal phylotypes for cherry, raspberry, and strawberry (one-way ANOVA: F3,44 = 4.33, P = 0.0093; F3,44 = 13.56, P = 2.11 × 10–6 and F3,44 = 13.86, P = 1.84 × 10–6, respectively, Fig. 2), but not blueberry (F3,44 = 2.27, P = 0.055). On cherries phylotype numbers increased during ripening, but raspberry and strawberry had greater numbers at intermediate stages of fruit maturation (Fig. 2).Figure 2Number of observed phylotypes across fruit types and maturation stages. Number of fungal phylotypes across four ripening stages (1, unripe/green fruit; 2, de-greening fruit; 3, ripening fruit; and 4, fully ripe/harvest fruit) for blueberry, cherry, raspberry and strawberry (N = 12 except N = 11 for strawberry stage 3). Numbers of fungal phylotypes differ across ripening stages for cherry, raspberry and strawberry but not blueberry (ANOVA, P values shown). Where significant, different lowercase letters represent significant differences in phylotype numbers within each fruit (P 97% homology to Metschnikowia kunwiensis and H. uvarum on raspberry; and phylotypes with > 97% homology to Kalmanozyma fusiformata (Ustilaginaceae smut fungi) and Podosphaera aphanis on strawberry.Twenty-four of the 195 indicator phylotypes belonged to the Saccharomycetales budding yeasts (Table S13). There were no Saccharomycetales indicator phylotypes for cherry, and just one for blueberry, a fungal phylotype with > 97% homology to Metschnikowia koreensis. Raspberry had 15 Saccharomycetales indicator phylotypes: three with > 97% homology to the Metschnikowia and, Candida genera, two Pichia and Schwanniomyces, and one each from Hanseniaspora, Barnettozyma, Debaryomyces, Candida, Geotrichum and Martiniozyma. There were eight indicator phylotypes for strawberry; two Candida and one from each of the Metschnikowia, Starmerella, Kodamaea and Hyphopichia genera and the Pichiaceae family, and a phylotype assigned to the no higher level than fungal kingdom (with > 97% homology to deposit from Candida genus). The dynamics of Saccharomycetales yeast indicator phylotypes abundances across maturation for raspberry and strawberry is shown in Fig. 6.Figure 6Dynamics of changes in the proportion of budding yeast indicator phylotypes. Mean proportion of reads for the Saccharomycetales budding yeast indicator phylotypes that are significantly overrepresented on (A) raspberry and (B) strawberry (P 97% homology identified by manual Blast searches.Full size imageDifferences of yeast known to be attractive to D. suzukii
Yeast from the Hanseniaspora, Pichia, Saccharomyces, Candida and Metschnikowia genera and their combinations are attractive to D. suzukii27,28,30,31, and phylotypes belonging to these genera were recovered here. The combined relative read abundances of all phylotypes assigned to these genera were significantly different between fruit types and ripening stages (Kruskal–Wallis chi-squared = 60.54, P = 4.51 × 10–13; chi-squared = 10.11, P = 0.018, respectively). Raspberry had the highest relative abundance of yeast genera known to be attractive to D. suzukii (mean ± SE = 21,539 ± 4339) and this was significantly greater than on the other fruits (P 97% homology to H. uvarum as over-represented on raspberry generally, and especially at later stages (Fig. 6A).Differences of Botrytis cinerea, known to be repulsive to D. suzukii
The relative read abundances of B. cinerea were significantly different between fruit types and ripening stages (Kruskal–Wallis chi-squared = 73.45, P = 7.80 × 10–16; Kruskal–Wallis chi-squared = 23.81, P = 2.74 × 10–5, respectively). Raspberry had the lowest relative abundance of B. cinerea (mean ± SE = 800 ± 136) and this was significantly lower than strawberry (1994 ± 292) and blueberry (5990 ± 1305) (P More
