Structure and stability of the coral microbiome in space and time

Tarik C. Gouhier,Nathaniel D. Chu,Courtney M. Dunphy,Steven V. Vollmer

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-43268-6

Tarik C. Gouhier, Nathaniel D. Chu + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43268-6

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Abstract

Although it is well established that the microbial communities inhabiting corals perform key functions that promote the health and persistence of their hosts, little is known about their spatial structure and temporal stability. We examined the natural variability of microbial communities associated with six Caribbean coral species from three genera at four reef sites over one year. We identified differences in microbial community composition between coral genera and species that persisted across space and time, suggesting that local host identity likely plays a dominant role in structuring the microbiome. However, we found that microbial community dissimilarity increased with geographical distance, which indicates that regional processes such as dispersal limitation and spatiotemporal environmental heterogeneity also influence microbial community composition. In addition, network analysis revealed that the strength of host identity varied across coral host genera, with species from the genus Acropora having the most influence over their microbial community. Overall, our results demonstrate that despite high levels of microbial diversity, coral species are characterized by signature microbiomes that are stable in both space and time.

Highlights

It is well established that the microbial communities inhabiting corals perform key functions that promote the health and persistence of their hosts, little is known about their spatial structure and temporal stability
Our analyses identified consistent differences in microbial community composition between coral genera and species that persisted in space and time, suggesting that host identity plays a more important role in structuring coral microbiomes than spatiotemporal environmental heterogeneity or dispersal
For site, we found that Crawl Key 14 (C14) and Casa Blanca (CB) were significantly different from Crawl Key 4 (C4) and Punta Caracol (PC) (Fig. 5C), with C14 and CB having significantly lower eigen centrality means

Summary

Introduction

It is well established that the microbial communities inhabiting corals perform key functions that promote the health and persistence of their hosts, little is known about their spatial structure and temporal stability. Recent evidence linking coral diseases to bacterial pathogens[6,7,8,9,10,11] suggests that quantifying variation in the composition of healthy microbiomes across coral species, space and time is critical in order to both understand the stability of host-microbial interactions and potentially predict disease outbreaks. Hernandez-Agreda[30] proposed partitioning the coral microbiome into three separate components: an environmentally responsive community (predominantly transient microbes linked to abiotic factors), a resident or individual microbiome, and a core microbiome (small group of highly persistent OTUs).

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