Sharp Koty H, Ritchie Kim B
Eckerd College, 4200 54th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33711, USA.
Biol Bull. 2012 Aug;223(1):66-77. doi: 10.1086/BBLv223n1p66.
Recent research has explored the possibility that increased sea-surface temperatures and decreasing pH (ocean acidification) contribute to the ongoing decline of coral reef ecosystems. Within corals, a diverse microbiome exerts significant influence on biogeochemical and ecological processes, including food webs, organismal life cycles, and chemical and nutrient cycling. Microbes on coral reefs play a critical role in regulating larval recruitment, bacterial colonization, and pathogen abundance under ambient conditions, ultimately governing the overall resilience of coral reef systems. As a result, microbial processes may be involved in reef ecosystem-level responses to climate change. Developments of new molecular technologies, in addition to multidisciplinary collaborative research on coral reefs, have led to the rapid advancement in our understanding of bacterially mediated reef responses to environmental change. Here we review new discoveries regarding (1) the onset of coral-bacterial associations; (2) the functional roles that bacteria play in healthy corals; and (3) how bacteria influence coral reef response to environmental change, leading to a model describing how reef microbiota direct ecosystem-level response to a changing global climate.
最近的研究探讨了海面温度升高和pH值下降（海洋酸化）导致珊瑚礁生态系统持续衰退的可能性。在珊瑚内部，多样的微生物群落对生物地球化学和生态过程产生重大影响，包括食物网、生物生命周期以及化学和养分循环。珊瑚礁上的微生物在调节环境条件下的幼体补充、细菌定殖和病原体丰度方面发挥着关键作用，最终决定了珊瑚礁系统的整体恢复力。因此，微生物过程可能参与了珊瑚礁生态系统对气候变化的响应。除了对珊瑚礁进行多学科合作研究外，新分子技术的发展也使我们对细菌介导的珊瑚礁对环境变化的响应的理解迅速进步。在此，我们综述了有关以下方面的新发现：（1）珊瑚与细菌关联的起始；（2）细菌在健康珊瑚中所起的功能作用；（3）细菌如何影响珊瑚礁对环境变化的响应，从而得出一个描述珊瑚礁微生物群如何引导生态系统对不断变化的全球气候做出响应的模型。
