Hunters or farmers? Microbiome characteristics help elucidate the diet composition in an aquatic carnivorous plant

Table 3 Relative proportions (%) of selected ecologically relevant prokaryotic functional guilds in different U. vulgaris trap ages (young, mature, and old)

Functional guild	Young	Mature	Old	All
Functional guild	%
Cellulolytic bacteria*	11	10	9	10
Methanotrophs^‡	15	15	14	15
Polyphenol degraders^‡	25	28	29	27
Nitrate reducers^‡	27	30	28	28
Denitrifiers^‡	16	17	17	16
N₂ fixators^‡	14	17	18	16
DNRA (nrfA gene)	7	8	6	7
Urea decomposers (ureA gene)	29	34	35	33
Sulfate reducers^‡	2	2	2	2

Differences between trap ages were not statistically significant for all functional guilds (ANOVA, Tukey’s post hoc test, alpha 0.05, n = 3)
*Cellulolytic bacteria were determined based on known cellulolytic families [50]. Functional genes were annotated based on RDP Fungene database ver. 8.3; DNRA—dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium. For the functional annotation of all OTUs, please refer to Additional file 5: Table S8
^‡Averages of relative gene abundance were calculated for those functional groups where more than one gene was responsible for the metabolic pathway; methanotrophs (pmoA and mmoX), polyphenol degraders (laccase_Asco, laccase_Basidio, lip, ppo), nitrate reducers (narG, napA), denitrifiers (nirS, nirK, norB, nosZ), N₂ fixators (nifH, nifD), and sulfate reducers (dsrA, dsrB)

ISSN: 2049-2618