Abstract
Sponge-associated prokaryotic diversity has been studied from a wide range of marine environments across the globe. However, for certain regions, e.g., Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore, an overview of the sponge-associated prokaryotic communities is still pending. In this study we characterized the prokaryotic communities from 27 specimens, comprising 18 marine sponge species, sampled from the central coastal region of Vietnam. Illumina MiSeq sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene fragments was used to investigate sponge-associated bacterial and archaeal diversity. Overall, 14 bacterial phyla and one archaeal phylum were identified among all 27 samples. The phylum Proteobacteria was present in all sponges and the most prevalent phylum in 15 out of 18 sponge species, albeit with pronounced differences at the class level. In contrast, Chloroflexi was the most abundant phylum in Halichondria sp., whereas Spirastrella sp. and Dactylospongia sp. were dominated by Actinobacteria. Several bacterial phyla such as Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Deferribacteres, Gemmatimonadetes, and Nitrospirae were found in two-thirds of the sponge species. Moreover, the phylum Thaumarchaeota (Archaea), which is known to comprise nitrifying archaea, was highly abundant among the majority of the 18 investigated sponge species. Altogether, this study demonstrates that the diversity of prokaryotic communities associated with Vietnamese sponges is comparable to sponge-prokaryotic assemblages from well-documented regions. Furthermore, the phylogenetically divergent sponges hosted species-specific prokaryotic communities, thus demonstrating the influence of host identity on the composition and diversity of the associated communities. Therefore, this high-throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon analysis of Vietnamese sponge-prokaryotic communities provides a foundation for future studies on sponge symbiont function and sponge-derived bioactive compounds from this region.
Highlights
Sponges (Porifera) are the sister group to all other metazoans (Simion et al, 2017), and are dated back at least 600 million years ago (Maloof et al, 2010; Yin et al, 2015)
high microbial abundance (HMA) sponges contain a high concentration of microorganisms (108–1010 microorganisms per gram sponge tissue), whereas the number of microorganisms in low microbial abundance (LMA) sponges is much lower with only 105–106 microorganisms per gram sponge tissue (Hentschel, Usher & Taylor, 2006)
Molecular sponge taxonomy A total of 27 sponge specimens were collected from the central coastal region of Vietnam and identified by sequence analysis of 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and c oxidase subunit I (COI) taxonomic marker genes
Summary
Sponges (Porifera) are the sister group to all other metazoans (Simion et al, 2017), and are dated back at least 600 million years ago (Maloof et al, 2010; Yin et al, 2015). Marine sponges are distributed across a wide range of habitats, from polar regions, and temperate benthic communities to subtropical and tropical coral reefs (Van Soest et al, 2012) They play an important ecological role in the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles in benthic ecosystems, and both aerobic and anaerobic processes have been observed (Bell, 2008; Maldonado, Ribes & van Duyl, 2012). Recent studies using deep sequencing revealed that some sequences in these monophyletic 16S RNA gene clusters are found in seawater and sediment samples, albeit at very low abundances These clusters are not strictly “sponge-specific,” but better described as “sponge-enriched” (Taylor et al, 2013; Thomas et al, 2016).
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