Microbiome dataset of bacterial and fungal communities in anthosphere of twelve different wild plants in South Korea

This dataset provides detailed profiles of bacterial and fungal communities associated with flowers (anthosphere) of 12 different plant species collected from remote and secluded locations characterized by a flourishing and diverse plant ecosystem. In total, 144 flower samples were collected from 12 different wild plants. Bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal ITS genes obtained using the Illumina Miseq approach were used to describe the anthosphere. Metadata and raw sequences obtained in this study are available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (BioProject ID: PRJNA983070). Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) of bacteria and fungi were analyzed using the DADA2 pipeline. After quality filtering, trimming, and removing the chimeric sequences, 2076 bacterial and 2152 fungal ASVs were identified in the anthosphere. Burkholderiales and Enterobacterales in bacteria, and Pleosporales in fungi were the predominant groups in the anthosphere regardless of the plant species. Among the twelve different plant species, Forsythia koreana exhibited the highest abundance of both bacterial and fungal groups. This dataset represents a detailed exploration of the anthosphere in the most abundant and commonly observed plant species in South Korea, and provides new insights into the microbial communities and interactions of the anthosphere.


a b s t r a c t
This dataset provides detailed profiles of bacterial and fungal communities associated with flowers (anthosphere) of 12 different plant species collected from remote and secluded locations characterized by a flourishing and diverse plant ecosystem. In total, 144 flower samples were collected from 12 different wild plants. Bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal ITS genes obtained using the Illumina Miseq approach were used to describe the anthosphere. Metadata and raw sequences obtained in this study are available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (BioProject ID: PRJNA983070). Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) of bacteria and fungi were analyzed using the DADA2 pipeline. After quality filtering, trimming, and removing the chimeric sequences, 2076 bacterial and 2152 fungal ASVs were identified in the anthosphere. Burkholderiales and Enterobacterales in bacteria, and Pleosporales in fungi were the predominant groups in the anthosphere regardless of the plant species. Among the twelve different plant species, Forsythia koreana exhibited the highest abundance of both bacterial and fungal groups. This dataset represents a detailed exploration of the anthosphere in the most abundant and commonly observed plant species

Value of the Data
• The bacterial and fungal microbiome datasets provided the variation patterns of microbial community structures harbored in different flowering plants that faced similar environmental and ecological conditions. • This dataset is valuable for understanding interactions within anthosphere microbes in South Korea. • This is the first study to explore the anthospheres of Veronica polita, Taraxacum platycarpum, Forsythia koreana, Chelidonium majus var. asiaticum, Prunus jamasakura, and Viola mandshurica . • This dataset can be used as a comparative dataset for scientists interested in exploring the differences among flowering plants in different regions and countries.

Objective
The plant microbiome plays a pivotal role in plant physiology. Most plant microbiome studies have focused on the rhizosphere to uncover complex interactions between plants and microbes [1] . The anthosphere, one of the most important parts of the phyllosphere, has recently been increasingly used to explore flower-related microbial roles and their influence on plant physiol-ogy [2] . Anthosphere microbes influence the phenotype of flowers and affect their interactions with pollinators [3] . In this study, we collected 144 different flower sam ples from twelve different plant species that faced similar environmental and ecological conditions and analyzed both bacteria and fungi to identify the microbial variations in anthosphere and hidden interspecies interactions in relation to the different plant species.

Study site and sampling design
Flower sampling was conducted on April 8, 2022, in Gurye (35.19 °N, 127.47 °E), South Korea. A total of 144 samples were obtained from a diverse range of twelve distinct plant species, with twelve flower samples obtained from each plant species. The sampling site was selected based on its abundance and diversity of wild plant species. To minimize within-species contamination of different plant types, all tools were sterilized with 80% ethanol before collecting the flower samples. After collecting the samples, each flower was stored in 1.7 mL e-tubes separately and immediately placed on dry ice until further analysis.

Bioinformatic analysis
To investigate the ASVs profiles of different flowers, the ASVs of bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal ITS genes were calculated using DADA2 (version 1.16.0) according to the pipeline tutorial (1.16) ( https://benjjneb.github.io/dada2/tutorial.html ) and DADA2 ITS Pipeline Workflow (1.8) ( https://benjjneb.github.io/dada2/ITS _ workflow.html ), respectively [7] . Singletons, doubletons, and tripletons were removed from the 16S rRNA and fungal ITS gene datasets before analysis. The latest Silva database (release 138.1) [8] and the latest UNITE general FASTA release for fungi (version 9.0) [9] were used to classify bacterial and fungal sequences, respectively. Any reads identified as chloroplast, mitochondrial, and negative control sequences were excluded from the 16S rRNA database. Three fungal samples were omitted from the data analyses because they did not satisfy the quality control thresholds.

Ethics Statement
The authors have read and followed the ethical requirements for publication in Data in Brief and confirm that the current work does not involve human subjects, animals experiments or any data collected from social media platforms.

Data Availability
Floral microbial community structure of 12 wild plants in Gurye, Korea Republic (Original data) (NCBI SRA).

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.