ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.

Sec. Marine Ecosystem Ecology

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1606783

Lucinid-Associated Microbial Community Divergence in Peri-Mangrove Ecosystems

Provisionally accepted
  • 1School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
  • 2Center for Deep Sea Research, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Qingdao, Shandong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Mangrove forests are highly productive coastal ecosystems in which microbial communities drive key biogeochemical processes, such as sulfur and carbon cycling. Lucinid clams and their bacterial symbionts, commonly found in organic-rich habitats such as mangrove fringes, can perform chemosynthesis driven by the oxidation of sulfide and can further modify sediment characteristics through their chemosymbiotic and burrowing activities. However, the impact of these activities on sedimentary microbial communities remains unclear. In this study, we collected sediment samples from areas with varying lucinid densities and conducted amplicon sequencing to examine microbial community structure. Our findings demonstrated that microbial diversity and community composition varied considerably with lucinid density. Among the dominant microbial taxa, sulfurreducing groups such as Desulfobacterales were significantly more abundant in samples from lucinid-rich regions. Furthermore, the abundance of sulfur-reducing functional genes was higher in lucinid-rich regions. These results indicate that the sulfur cycle is more active in these areas, possibly due to the high organic matter content and the presence of chemosymbiotic lucinids. The accelerated sulfur cycle can enhance carbon fixation by lucinid symbionts, highlighting the ecological importance of chemosymbiotic bivalves in peri-mangrove microbial communities.

Keywords: Mangrove ecosystem, Lucinids, microbial community, sulfur cycle, Amplicon sequencing

Received: 06 Apr 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Shi, Guo, Jin, Li, Zhong, Zhang, Zhang and Minxiao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Jianhua Zhang, School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, 266033, Shandong Province, China
Wang Minxiao, Center for Deep Sea Research, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Qingdao, 266071, Shandong Province, China

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