bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/601419; this version posted April 7, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Microbiota differences of the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi in native and invasive sub‐populations Cornelia Jaspers1*, Nancy Weiland‐Bräuer3, Martin Fischer3, Sven Künzel4, Ruth A. Schmitz3 and Thorsten B.H. Reusch1 1GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Marine Evolutionary Ecology, Kiel, Germany 2Institute for General Microbiology, Christian‐Albrechts‐Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany 3Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany *corresponding author:
[email protected], +49‐431‐600‐4560, ORCID: 0000‐0003‐2850‐4131 Keywords: Comb jelly, metaorganism, bacteria, species translocations, invasive species 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/601419; this version posted April 7, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. ABSTRACT The translocation of non‐indigenous species around the world, especially in marine systems, is a matter of concern for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. While specific traits are often recognized to influence establishment success of non‐indigenous species, the impact of the associated microbial community for the fitness, performance and invasion success of basal marine metazoans remains vastly unknown. In this study we compared the microbiota community composition of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in different native and invasive sub‐populations along with characterization of the genetic structure of the host. By 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing we showed that the sister group to all metazoans, namely ctenophores, harbored a distinct microbiota on the animal host, which significantly differed across two major tissues, namely epidermis and gastrodermis.