Bacterial Community Shifts during Polyp Bail-Out Induction in Pocillopora Corals

American Society for Microbiology 2023-06-28

Chuang Po-Shun
Yamada Yosuke
Liu Po-Yu
Tang Sen-Lin
Mitarai Satoshi

Polyp bail-out constitutes both a stress response and an asexual reproductive strategy that potentially facilitates dispersal of some scleractinian corals, including several dominant reef-building taxa in the family Pocilloporidae. Recent studies have proposed that microorganisms may be involved in onset and progression of polyp bail-out. However, changes in the coral microbiome during polyp bail-out have not been investigated. In this study, we induced polyp bail-out in Pocillopora corals using hypersaline and hyperthermal methods. Bacterial community dynamics during bail-out induction were examined using the V5-V6 region of the 16S-rRNA gene. From 70 16S-rRNA gene libraries constructed from coral tissues, 1,980 OTUs were identified. Gammaproteobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria consistently constituted the dominant bacterial taxa in all coral tissue samples. Onset of polyp bail-out was characterized by increased relative abundance of Alphaproteobacteria and decreased abundance of Gammaproteobacteria in both induction experiments, with the shift being more prominent in response to elevated temperature than to elevated salinity. Four OTUs, affiliated with Thalassospira, Marisediminitalea, Rhodobacteraceae, and Myxococcales, showed concurrent abundance increases at the onset of polyp bail-out in both experiments, suggesting potential microbial causes of this coral stress response.

polyp bail-out|Pocillopora|microbiome|bacterial community|Thalassospira; Journal Article; VoR

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© 2023 Chuang et al.

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JPNII oai:irdb.nii.ac.jp:01076:0005948451
2165-0497
Microbiology Spectrum, 11(4), e00257-23-
1409752294

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