Changes in Bacterial Communities of Kumamoto Oyster Larvae During Their Early Development and Following Vibrio Infection Resulting in a Mass Mortality Event

Abstract

Vibrio and Ostreid herpesvirus 1 are responsible for mass mortalities of oyster larvae in hatcheries. Relevant works have focused on their relationships with the disease when larval mortality occurs. On the contrary, little is known about how the resident microbiota in oyster larvae responds to Vibrio-infected disease causing mortality as the disease progressed, whereas this knowledge is fundamental to unveil the etiology of the disease. Here, we analyzed the temporal succession of the microbiome of Kumamoto oyster (Crassostrea sikamea) larvae during their early development, accompanied by a Vibrio-caused mortality event that occurred at the post D-stage of larval development in a shellfish hatchery in Ningbo, China, on June 2020. The main causative agent of larval mortality was attributable to Vibrio infection, which was confirmed by linearly increased Vibrio abundance over disease progression. Larval bacterial communities dramatically changed over host development and disease progression, as highlighted by reduced α-diversity and less diverse core taxa when the disease occurred. Null model and phylogenetic-based mean nearest taxon distance analyses showed that the relative importance of deterministic processes governing larval bacterial assembly initially increased over host development, whereas this dominance was depleted over disease progression. Furthermore, we screened the disease-discriminatory taxa with a significant change in their relative abundances, which could be indicative of disease progression. In addition, network analysis revealed that disease occurrence remodeled the co-occurrence patterns and niche characteristics of larval microbiota. Our findings demonstrate that the dysbiosis of resident bacterial communities and the shift of microecological mechanisms in the larval microbiome may contribute to mortality during oyster early development.

Keywords: Bacterial community assembly; Co-occurrence network; Larval development; Mortality; Oyster hatchery; Vibrio infection.