Journal article
Assessing the contribution of bacteria to the heat tolerance of experimentally evolved coral photosymbionts
J Maire, P Deore, VJ Jameson, M Sakkas, A Perez-Gonzalez, LL Blackall, MJH van Oppen
Environmental Microbiology | Published : 2023
Abstract
Coral reefs are extremely vulnerable to ocean warming, which triggers coral bleaching—the loss of endosymbiotic microalgae (Symbiodiniaceae) from coral tissues, often leading to death. To enhance coral climate resilience, the symbiont, Cladocopium proliferum was experimentally evolved for >10 years under elevated temperatures resulting in increased heat tolerance. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding showed the composition of intra- and extracellular bacterial communities of heat-evolved strains was significantly different from that of wild-type strains, suggesting bacteria responded to elevated temperatures, and may even play a role in C. proliferum thermal tolerance. To assess whether mic..
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Awarded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship FL180100036 (to Madeleine J. H. van Oppen) and the Gordon and Betty Moore foundation (grant #9351 to Linda L. Blackall and Madeleine J. H. van Oppen). We thank the Biosciences Microscopy Unit and the Biological Optical Microscopy Platform at the University of Melbourne for the use of their confocal microscopes. We also thank Dr Benjamin Hume (Universitaet Konstanz) for his assistance in analysing ITS2 metabarcoding data. Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Melbourne, as part of the Wiley - The University of Melbourne agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.