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

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 pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2016-06, Vol.6 (1), p.27277-27277, Article 27277
Main Authors: van de Water, Jeroen A. J. M., Melkonian, Rémy, Junca, Howard, Voolstra, Christian R., Reynaud, Stéphanie, Allemand, Denis, Ferrier-Pagès, Christine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158/855
631/326/2565/855
Animals
Anthozoa - microbiology
Bacteria
Chemical analysis
DNA, Bacterial - genetics
DNA, Ribosomal - genetics
High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing - methods
Humanities and Social Sciences
Marine invertebrates
Mediterranean Sea
Microbiota
multidisciplinary
Nutrient cycles
Oceanospirillaceae - classification
Oceanospirillaceae - genetics
Oceanospirillaceae - isolation & purification
Phylogeny
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Seawater
Sequence Analysis, DNA - methods
Spirochaeta - classification
Spirochaeta - genetics
Spirochaeta - isolation & purification
Sulfur
Symbiosis
Taxonomy
Water analysis
Water temperature
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Summary: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, in particular the ME2 family. Bacteria belonging to these orders have been implicated in nutrient cycling, including nitrogen, carbon and sulfur. While Oceanospirillales are common symbionts of marine invertebrates, our results identify members of the Spirochaetales as other important dominant symbiotic bacterial associates within Anthozoans.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep27277