Archaeal and bacterial communities associated with the surface mucus of Caribbean corals differ in their degree of host specificity and community turnover over reefs

Author(s)
Pedro Rodrigues Frade, Katharina Roll, Kristin Bergauer, Gerhard Herndl
Abstract

Comparative studies on the distribution of archaeal versus bacterial communities associated with the surface mucus layer of corals have rarely taken place. It has therefore remained enigmatic whether mucus-associated archaeal and bacterial communities exhibit a similar specificity towards coral hosts and whether they vary in the same fashion over spatial gradients and between reef locations. We used microbial community profiling (terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism, T-RFLP) and clone library sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to compare the diversity and community structure of dominant archaeal and bacterial communities associating with the mucus of three common reef-building coral species (Porites astreoides, Siderastrea siderea and Orbicella annularis) over different spatial scales on a Caribbean fringing reef. Sampling locations included three reef sites, three reef patches within each site and two depths. Reference sediment samples and ambient water were also taken for each of the 18 sampling locations resulting in a total of 239 samples. While only 41% of the bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) characterized by T-RFLP were shared between mucus and the ambient water or sediment, for archaeal OTUs this percentage was 2-fold higher (78%). About half of the mucus-associated OTUs (44% and 58% of bacterial and archaeal OTUs, respectively) were shared between the three coral species. Our multivariate statistical analysis (ANOSIM, PERMANOVA and CCA) showed that while the bacterial community composition was determined by habitat (mucus, sediment or seawater), host coral species, location and spatial distance, the archaeal community composition was solely determined by the habitat. This study highlights that mucus-associated archaeal and bacterial communities differ in their degree of community turnover over reefs and in their host-specificity.

Organisation(s)
Functional and Evolutionary Ecology
External organisation(s)
Universität Wien, Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation (CARMABI), Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
Journal
PLoS ONE
Volume
11
No. of pages
20
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144702
Publication date
2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
106021 Marine biology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all), General, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG 14 - Life Below Water
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/archaeal-and-bacterial-communities-associated-with-the-surface-mucus-of-caribbean-corals-differ-in-their-degree-of-host-specificity-and-community-turnover-over-reefs(3e5fcf07-ae0f-456c-b8b5-e9342c7f0a2d).html