Distinguishing between Microbial Habitats Unravels Ecological Complexity in Coral Microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: The diverse prokaryotic communities associated with reef-building corals may provide important ecological advantages to their threatened hosts. The consistency of relationships between corals and specific prokaryotes, however, is debated, and the locations where microbially mediated processes occur in the host are not resolved. Here, we examined how the prokaryotic associates of five common Caribbean corals with different evolutionary and ecological traits differ across mucus and tissue habitats. We used physical and chemical separation of coral mucus and tissue and sequencing of partial small-subunit rRNA genes of bacteria and archaea from these samples to demonstrate that coral tissue and mucus harbor unique reservoirs of prokaryotes, with 23 to 49% and 31 to 56% of sequences exclusive t

SUBMITTER: Apprill A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5080407 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep-Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature