Acidobacteria appear to dominate the microbiome of two sympatric Caribbean Sponges and one Zoanthid.

Yuri J Peña-Ramírez,César De Los Santos-Briones,Adán J Rivera-Domínguez,Aileen O’Connor-Sánchez,Alejandra Prieto-Davo,Lluvia K López-Aguiar

doi:10.1186/0717-6287-47-67

Abstract

BackgroundMarine invertebrate-associated microbial communities are interesting examples of complex symbiotic systems and are a potential source of biotechnological products.ResultsIn this work, pyrosequencing-based assessment from bacterial community structures of sediments, two sponges, and one zoanthid collected in the Mexican Caribbean was performed. The results suggest that the bacterial diversity at the species level is higher in the sediments than in the animal samples. Analysis of bacterial communities’ structure showed that about two thirds of the bacterial diversity in all the samples belongs to the phyla Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria. The genus Acidobacterium appears to dominate the bacterial community in all the samples, reaching almost 80% in the sponge Hyrtios.ConclusionsOur evidence suggests that the sympatric location of these benthonic species may lead to common bacterial structure features among their bacterial communities. The results may serve as a first insight to formulate hypotheses that lead to more extensive studies of sessile marine organisms’ microbiomes from the Mexican Caribbean.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/0717-6287-47-67) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Marine invertebrate-associated microbial communities are interesting examples of complex symbiotic systems and are a potential source of biotechnological products
A total of 26,959 rRNA quality sequences with an average read length of 466 bp were generated through the tag-pyrosequencing
Acidobacteria accounted for only 6% of the phyla they detected; in contrast with the 60% that we found in our zoanthid sample

Summary

Introduction

Marine invertebrate-associated microbial communities are interesting examples of complex symbiotic systems and are a potential source of biotechnological products. The studies on sponge-associated microbial communities have had an increased attention of the scientific community. (II) The spongemicrobe interactions are interesting examples of complex symbiotic systems [2]. Sponges are the simplest multicellular animals and the most ancient metazoans [3]. The diversity and specificity of microbial communities in marine organisms is a key aspect of the ecology and evolutionary relationships between both the eukaryotic hosts and their associated prokaryotes. Most studies have focused on sponges of high latitudes and very little is known about the structure of microbial communities associated with sponges of tropical seas

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