Abstract
Recent work on microbe-host interactions has revealed an important nexus between the environment, microbiome, and host fitness. Marine invertebrates that build carbonate skeletons are of particular interest in this regard because of predicted effects of ocean acidification on calcified organisms, and the potential of microbes to buffer these impacts. Here we investigate the role of sulfate-reducing bacteria, a group well known to affect carbonate chemistry, in Pacific oyster (Magallana gigas) shell formation. We reared oyster larvae to 51 days post fertilization and exposed organisms to control and sodium molybdate conditions, the latter of which is thought to inhibit bacterial sulfate reduction. Contrary to expectations, we found that sodium molybdate did not uniformly inhibit sulfate-reducing bacteria in oysters, and oysters exposed to molybdate grew larger shells over the experimental period. Additionally, we show that microbiome composition, host gene expression, and shell size were distinct between treatments earlier in ontogeny, but became more similar by the end of the experiment. Although additional testing is required to fully elucidate the mechanisms, our work provides preliminary evidence that M. gigas is capable of regulating microbiome dysbiosis caused by environmental perturbations, which is reflected in shell development.
Highlights
Disentangling the relationship between environment, microbiome, and host fitness is essential for predicting how marine taxa will respond to climate change
Oysters exposed to sodium molybdate exhibited greater shell growth than the control
We noticed a large difference in size variation of oysters between the two treatment buckets (Fig 2) so we applied a mixed linear model to test the effect of bucket ID on shell area for 38 day old oysters. ~55% of the variance was accounted for based on bucket ID, while ~44% of the variance remained unexplained by the model (Table 2)
Summary
Disentangling the relationship between environment, microbiome, and host fitness is essential for predicting how marine taxa will respond to climate change. Marine invertebrates that build calcified skeletons are under particular scrutiny, given how climate change driven ocean acidification is predicted to make skeleton growth more difficult [1]. Both the host and its microbiome (the holobiont) are likely to play an important role in the formation of such skeletons [2,3] as most microbiomes are species specific and correlate strongly with characteristics of the hosts’ innate immunity and, to a lesser extent, host trophic habits and local environmental conditions [4]. Images of shells are available through Harvard Dataverse using the link https://doi.org/10.7910/ DVN/C9CSB3
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