Exploring Saccharomycotina Yeast Ecology Through an Ecological Ontology
Framework
Abstract
Yeasts in the subphylum Saccharomycotina are found across the globe in
disparate ecosystems. A major aim of yeast research is to understand the
diversity and evolution of ecological traits, such as carbon metabolic
breadth, insect association, and cactophily. This includes studying
aspects of ecological traits like genetic architecture or association
with other phenotypic traits. Genomic resources in the Saccharomycotina
have grown rapidly. Ecological data, however, are still limited for many
species, especially those only known from species descriptions where
usually only a limited number of strains are studied. Moreover,
ecological information is recorded in natural language format limiting
high throughput computational analysis. To address these limitations, we
developed an ontological framework for the analysis of yeast ecology. A
total of 1,088 yeast strains were added to the Ontology of Yeast
Environments (OYE) and analyzed in a machine-learning framework to
connect genotype to ecology. This framework is flexible and can be
extended to additional isolates, species, or environmental sequencing
data. Widespread adoption of OYE would greatly aid the study of
macroecology in the Saccharomycotina subphylum.