Spirochaetes dominate the microbial community associated with the red coral Corallium rubrum on a broad geographic scale.

ABSTRACT: Mass mortality events in populations of the iconic red coral Corallium rubrum have been related to seawater temperature anomalies that may have triggered microbial disease development. However, very little is known about the bacterial community associated with the red coral. We therefore aimed to provide insight into this species' bacterial assemblages using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons generated from samples collected at five locations distributed across the western Mediterranean Sea. Twelve bacterial species were found to be consistently associated with the red coral, forming a core microbiome that accounted for 94.6% of the overall bacterial community. This core microbiome was particularly dominated by bacteria of the orders Spirochaetales and Oceanospirillales,

SUBMITTER: van de Water JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4893704 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature