Aquatic associated plant fungi across urbanization gradient

Utah County, UT is one of the fastest growing regions of the United States. With increased population density, it is important to analyze the effects of urbanization on the surrounding environment and the organisms occupying it. Although the effects of urbanization on watersheds are well-studied, microbial communities are less so. Here, we utilized a watershed with increasing urbanization to examine the effects of human population, impermeable surface, and industrialization densities on the mycobiome of the aquatic plant, Ranunculus aquatilis. We used high-throughput amplicon sequencing of 16S and ITS regions to interrogate bacterial and fungal community composition. We hypothesize that increasing pollutant stress on plants will reduce microbial community diversity. Sequence data acquisition is ongoing at the time of this writing.



All taxonomy found along with absolute abundance


Phylum relative abundance in each sample



We can see a wide variety of fungal phyla but it was clearly dominated by ascomycetes.

Multiple regression on matrices

coef.asv_dist coef.pval r.squared F.test
0.8595583 0.839 0.0050603 1.393582
0.3894013 0.325 0.3250000 0.325000

Sample proximity did not correlate significantly with community structure. The pattern seen in species richness is driven by rare and unique taxa. We hypothesize that increasing urbanization and pollution is responsible for some of the community structure.

Contact Us

Jacob Mora | email: Geoff Zahn | email: