The bacteriome of the Endangered South African endemic Pickersgill’s Reed Frog (Hyperolius pickersgilli)

Abstract

Pickersgill’s Reed Frog (Hyperolius pickersgilli) is an endangered species, endemic to South Africa and restricted to the KwaZulu-Natal coastal region. The species occurs in fragmented patches of coastal reed-bed wetland, which is a habitat that is threatened by urbanisation, agriculture, mining, and plantation forestry. We used a 16S rRNA Next Generation Sequencing approach to characterise the bacteriome of 20 adult H. pickersgilli from three localities and determined the prevalence of anti-Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) associated bacteria by comparing representative amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) sequences to known references using The Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) tool of National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Results from three different populations were found to harbour similar skin microbial communities, dominated by a core set of bacterial taxa that included Proteobacteria (39.67% of total ASVs), Actinobacteria (14.83%) and Firmicutes (11.21%). Anti-Bd associated bacterial communities were identified from all three localities (4.12–15.47% of total ASVs), that may be contributing to the reported low frequency of occurrence of the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and may contribute to the lack of known morbidity or mortality from chytridiomycosis in H. pickersgilli. A higher prevalence of Chlamydiia in Mount Moreland suggests a possible alteration in the skin bacteriome composition in this population and warrants further investigation. Future studies should evaluate the relationship between the bacteriome of H. pickersgilli and the bacteria present in the environment to assess what role the environment plays in the bacteriome’s formation.