Bacterial communities associated with tuberculate ectomycorrhizae of Rhizopogon spp.

We have previously reported the design of a new PCR primer pair that allows amplification of a broad range of eubacterial 16S rDNA sequences from ectomycorrhizae (ECM) without co-amplification of plastid or mitochondrial sequences. Here, we report using a similar primer combination to generate three small 16S rDNA libraries from tuberculate ECM of Rhizopogon spp., two from R. vinicolor ECM (libraries Rvi18 and Rvi24) and one from R. vesiculosus ECM (library Rve13). At the class level, libraries were dominated by sequences from the Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Acidobacteria, with some Sphingobacteria, Actinobacteria, Planctomycetacia, and Verrucomicrobiae present as well. Based on the parsimony test implemented in TreeClimber, libraries Rvi18 and Rvi24 were significantly different from Rve13 at the alpha = 0.05 level, while they were only borderline significantly different from each other (p = 0.07). Differences between Rvi and Rve libraries were primarily due to differences in the number of Alphaproteobacteria sequences and specifically sequences from the Rhizobiales, which were more common in the Rve13 library. It is currently unknown what drives these differences between eubacterial communities. Amplification success for eubacterial 16S rDNA sequences was generally low in this study indicating low abundance of bacteria on tuberculate ECM. Attempts to amplify nitrogenase reductase (nifH) sequences were unsuccessful.