Organisms associated with siphonophores revealed by short-read whole-genome sequencing

Molecular bycatch from siphonophore genome sequencing recovered 104 bacterial genomes in 32 genome clusters, including recurrent Metamycoplasmataceae, across 213 Physalia, Nanomia, Bargmannia, and other specimens.

• Why it matters: Siphonophores are known to associate with many organisms in the open ocean, but the identity and diversity of their cobionts remain poorly characterized.
• What they did: The study reanalyzed DNA captured during whole-genome sequencing of 213 siphonophore specimens from four prior studies, assembling bacterial genomes and using ribosomal markers to detect non-siphonophore eukaryotes.
• The result: Bacterial communities differed among Physalia species from the southwestern Pacific, and eukaryotic bycatch included fish, copepods, parasitic flatworms, and Perkinsela-like amoeba endosymbiont relatives, plus alfonsino sequences in one Hawaiian P. utriculus specimen.

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