Coral bacterial community structure responds to environmental change in a host-specific manner

Maren Ziegler,Marcelle M Barreto,Khalid Zubier,Rupert Ormond,Martin Eaton,Adnan J Turki,Abdulmohsin Al-Sofyani,Christian R Voolstra,Carsten G B Grupstra,Jaafar Baomar

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10969-5

Maren Ziegler, Marcelle M Barreto + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10969-5

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The global decline of coral reefs heightens the need to understand how corals respond to changing environmental conditions. Corals are metaorganisms, so-called holobionts, and restructuring of the associated bacterial community has been suggested as a means of holobiont adaptation. However, the potential for restructuring of bacterial communities across coral species in different environments has not been systematically investigated. Here we show that bacterial community structure responds in a coral host-specific manner upon cross-transplantation between reef sites with differing levels of anthropogenic impact. The coral Acropora hemprichii harbors a highly flexible microbiome that differs between each level of anthropogenic impact to which the corals had been transplanted. In contrast, the microbiome of the coral Pocillopora verrucosa remains remarkably stable. Interestingly, upon cross-transplantation to unaffected sites, we find that microbiomes become indistinguishable from back-transplanted controls, suggesting the ability of microbiomes to recover. It remains unclear whether differences to associate with bacteria flexibly reflects different holobiont adaptation mechanisms to respond to environmental change.

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The global decline of coral reefs heightens the need to understand how corals respond to changing environmental conditions
We found that the A. hemprichii microbiome is highly flexible and more variable, whereas the P. verrucosa microbiome is fairly stable and overall less variable in response to changing environmental conditions
These findings suggest that coral species exhibit different degrees of flexibility in holobiont structure and composition

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The global decline of coral reefs heightens the need to understand how corals respond to changing environmental conditions. We show that bacterial community structure responds in a coral host-specific manner upon cross-transplantation between reef sites with differing levels of anthropogenic impact. Microbiomes of Ctenactis echinata varied between different reef habitats to the degree that abundance of coral host species was associated with the presence/ absence of specific bacteria[16]. Acropora hyacinthus can be acquired by heat sensitive corals upon environmental transplantation over the course of 17 months[11] These corals exhibited increased thermotolerance in a subsequent heat stress experiment, harboring a more robust and stable microbiome. At present, it is unclear whether the potential for microbiome restructuring is a conserved trait across coral species or whether species-specific differences exist.

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