Nectar compounds impact bacterial and fungal growth and shift community dynamics in a nectar analog

Abstract

Floral nectar is frequently colonized by fungi and bacteria. However, within individual flowers, nectar microbial communities are typically species-poor and dominated by few cosmopolitan genera. One hypothesis is that nectar constituents may act as a strong environmental filter. Non-sugar constituents in nectar could affect species composition via broad antimicrobial activity or differential effects on nectar microbial species. Here, we tested how five non-sugar nectar compounds as well as elevated sugar impacted the growth of 12 fungal and bacterial species isolated from flowers, pollinators, and the environment. We hypothesized that microbes isolated from nectar would be better able to grow in the presence of these compounds. Additionally, to test if nectar compounds could affect the outcome of competition among microbial taxa, we grew a subset of microbes in co-culture assays across a subset of treatments. We found that some compounds such as H2O2 broadly suppressed microbial growth across many but not all microbes tested. Other tested compounds were more specialized in the microbes they impacted. As hypothesized, the nectar specialist Metschnikowia reukaufii was unaffected by most nectar compounds assayed. However, many non-nectar specialist microbes remained unaffected by compounds thought to reduce microbial growth in nectar. Our results show that nectar chemistry can influence nectar microbial communities but that microbe-specific responses to nectar compounds are common. Nectar chemistry also affected the outcome of species interactions among microbial taxa, suggesting that non-sugar compounds in nectar can affect microbial community assembly and abundance in flowers.