Data from: Dominance of Endozoicomonas bacteria throughout coral bleaching and mortality suggests structural inflexibility of the Pocillopora verrucosa microbiome
Type
DatasetAuthors
Pogoreutz, ClaudiaRadecker, Nils
Cardenas, Anny
Gärdes, Astrid
Wild, Christian
Voolstra, Christian R.

Radecker, Nils
Cardenas, Anny
Gärdes, Astrid
Wild, Christian
Voolstra, Christian R.

KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionMarine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Reef Genomics Lab
Date
2018Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/664015
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The functional importance of Symbiodinium algal endosymbionts and a diverse suite of bacteria for coral holobiont health and functioning is widely acknowledged. Yet, we know surprisingly little about microbial community dynamics and the stability of host-microbe associations under adverse environmental conditions. To gain insight into the stability of coral host-microbe associations and holobiont structure, we assessed changes in the community structure of Symbiodinium and bacteria associated with the coral Pocillopora verrucosa under excess organic nutrient conditions. Pocillopora-associated microbial communities were monitored over 14 days in two independent experiments. We assessed the effect of excess dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and excess dissolved organic carbon (DOC), the latter which was published recently. Exposure to excess nutrients rapidly affected coral health, resulting in two distinct stress phenotypes: coral bleaching under excess DOC on the one hand and severe tissue sloughing (> 90 % tissue loss resulting in host mortality) under excess DON. These phenotypes were accompanied by structural changes in the Symbiodinium community. In contrast, the associated bacterial community remained remarkably stable and was dominated by two Endozoicomonas phylotypes, comprising on average 90 % of bacterial sequences. This dominance of Endozoicomonas even under conditions of coral bleaching and mortality suggests the bacterial community of P. verrucosa may be rather inflexible, and thereby unable to respond or acclimatize to rapid changes in the environment, contrary to what was previously observed in other corals. In this light, our results add important detail to our understanding of the structural flexibility and stability of the coral holobiont. Coral holobionts might occupy structural landscapes ranging from highly flexible to rather inflexible with consequences for their ability to respond to environmental change.Citation
Pogoreutz, C., Rädecker, N., Cardenas, A., Gärdes, A., Wild, C., & Voolstra, C. R. (2018). Data from: Dominance of Endozoicomonas bacteria throughout coral bleaching and mortality suggests structural inflexibility of the Pocillopora verrucosa microbiome (Version 1) [Data set]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/DRYAD.23GP4Publisher
DryadRelations
Is Supplement To:- [Article]
Pogoreutz C, Rädecker N, Cárdenas A, Gärdes A, Wild C, et al. (2018) Dominance of Endozoicomonas bacteria throughout coral bleaching and mortality suggests structural inflexibility of the Pocillopora verrucosa microbiome. Ecology and Evolution. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3830.. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.3830 HANDLE: 10754/627006
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.5061/dryad.23gp4