Abstract
Associations between host genotype and the microbiome of holobionts have
been shown in a variety of animal clades, but studies on teleosts mostly
show weak associations. Our study aimed to explore these relationships
in four sympatric Serrasalmidae (i.e. piranha) teleosts from an
Amazonian lake, using datasets from the hosts genomes (SNPs from GBS),
skin and gut microbiomes (16S rRNA metataxonomics), and diets (COI
metabarcoding) from the same fish individuals. Firstly, we investigated
whether there were significant covariations of microbiome and fish
genotypes at the inter and intraspecific scales. We also assessed the
extent of co-variation between Serrasalmidae diet and microbiome, to
isolate genotypic differences from dietary effects on community
structure. We observed a significant covariation of skin microbiomes and
host genotypes at interspecific (R2=24.4%) and intraspecific (R2=6.2%)
scales, whereas gut microbiomes correlated poorly with host genotypes.
Serrasalmidae diet composition was significantly correlated to fish
genotype only at the interspecific scale (R2=5.4%), but did not covary
with gut microbiome composition (Mantel R=-0.04; only 6 microbiome taxa
involved). Secondly, we tested whether microbial taxa represent reliable
host traits to complement host genotypic variations in these species. By
using an NMDS ordination-based approach, we observed that subsets of the
skin and gut microbiomes selected by a machine-learning Random Forest
algorithm can complement host genotypic variations by increasing
significantly the average interspecific differentiation. The
complementarity of genome and microbiome variations suggests that
combining both markers could potentially benefit our understanding of
the evolution of Serrasalmidae in future studies.