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Fungi are a highly diverse group of microbes that fundamentally influence the biogeochemistry of the biosphere, but we currently know little about the diversity and distribution of fungi in aquatic habitats. Here we describe shifts in marine fungal community composition across different marine habitats, using targeted pyrosequencing of the fungal Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region. Our results demonstrate strong partitioning of fungal community composition between estuarine, coastal and oceanic samples, with each habitat hosting discrete communities that are controlled by patterns in salinity, temperature, oxygen and nutrients. Whereas estuarine habitats comprised a significant proportion of fungal groups often found in terrestrial habitats, the open ocean sites were dominated by previously unidentified groups. The patterns observed here indicate that fungi are potentially a significant, although largely overlooked, feature of the ocean's microbiota, but greater efforts to characterize marine species are required before the full ecological and biogeochemical importance of marine fungi can be ascertained., (© 2016 Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Different oceanographic provinces host discrete microbial assemblages that are adapted to local physicochemical conditions. We sequenced and compared the metagenomes of two microbial communities inhabiting adjacent water masses in the Tasman Sea, where the recent strengthening of the East Australian Current (EAC) has altered the ecology of coastal environments. Despite the comparable latitude of the samples, significant phylogenetic differences were apparent, including shifts in the relative frequency of matches to Cyanobacteria, Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeota. Fine-scale variability in the structure of SAR11, Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus populations, with more matches to 'warm-water' ecotypes observed in the EAC, indicates the EAC may drive an intrusion of tropical microbes into temperate regions of the Tasman Sea. Furthermore, significant shifts in the relative importance of 17 metabolic categories indicate that the EAC prokaryotic community has different physiological properties than surrounding waters., (© 2012 Society for Applied Microbiology and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)