Microbiome Structuring Within a Coral Colony and Along a Sedimentation Gradient

作者：J. Fifer, Vy Bui, J. Berg, Nicola G. Kriefall, C. Klepac, B. Bentlage, S. Davies · 发表于：Frontiers in Marine Science · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.3389/fmars.2021.805202 · 被引用次数：25

Reef-building corals form complex relationships with a wide range of microbial partners, including symbiotic algae in the family Symbiodiniaceae and various bacteria. These coral-associated communities can be shaped to varying degrees by environmental context. Sedimentation can structure a coral’s microbial community by altering light availability for symbiotic algae, triggering the coral’s stress response, or serving as a reservoir for both pathogenic and essential bacterial and algal symbionts. To examine the influence of sedimentation on a coral’s microbiome, we used 16S rDNA and ITS-2 amplicon sequencing to characterize the bacterial and algal communities associated with the massive scleractinian coral Porites lobata across pairs of sites along a naturally occurring sedimentation gradient in Fouha Bay, southern Guam. Additionally, we investigate the influence of proximity to sediment on the coral colony scale, by sampling from the edge and center of colonies as well as the nearby sediment. The P. lobata colonies associated with several different genotypes of Cladocopium C15 algal symbionts and often harbored different genotypes within a single colony. However, the different Cladocopium genotypes showed no structuring according to colony position or location along the sedimentation gradient. Bacterial communities were largely consistent across the sedimentation gradient, however, some rarer taxa were differentially abundant across sites. Planococcaceae shows higher abundan...