Highly structured prokaryote communities exist within the skeleton of coral colonies

VR Marcelino; MJH Van Oppen; H Verbruggen

Journal article

Highly structured prokaryote communities exist within the skeleton of coral colonies

VR Marcelino, MJH Van Oppen, H Verbruggen

Isme Journal | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2017.164

Abstract

Physiological performance, disease and bleaching prevalence are often patchy within individual coral colonies. These responses are largely influenced by coral-associated microbes, but how the coral microbiome changes over small spatial scales has never been quantified before. We performed a high-resolution quantification of the spatial scale of microbial species turnover (β-diversity) within skeletons of boulder-forming Porites corals. We found very strong prokaryotic species turnover across spatial scales ranging from 4 mm to 2 m within individual colonies, possibly resulting from dispersal limitation and microbial interactions. The microalgal community was more homogeneously distributed, w..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Vanessa Rossetto Marcelino Author

Madeleine van Oppen Author

Heroen Verbruggen Author

Related Projects (2)

Evolutionary dynamics of the algae: Understanding adaptive potential under environmental change

Ecological niches and trace metal availability have large influences on the role of marine algae as a sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide...

Genome dynamics following plastid endosymbiosis

Plastid endosymbiosis events (enslavement of an algal cell inside of a host cell to form a plastid) are difficult to pinpoint because the ge..

Grants

Awarded by Appalachian Regional Commission

Funding Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Australian Biological Resources Study (RFL213-08), the Australian Research Council (FT110100585, DP150100705), the University of Melbourne (Botany Foundation grant to VRM and ECR grant to HV), the Albert Shimmins Fund and the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment. The bioinformatics aspects were supported by use of the Melbourne Bioinformatics (VLSCI) facilities (project UOM0007) and the Nectar Research Cloud, a collaborative Australian research platform supported by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). We are grateful to Zac Forsman for providing advice on DNA barcodes for coral identification, Eric Treml for advice on statistical analyses and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We thank Mike Van Keulen, Frazer McGregor, the Heron Island Research Station staff and the members of the Verbruggen lab for facilitating fieldwork.