Ziegler Maren, Arif Chatchanit, Burt John A, Dobretsov Sergey, Roder Cornelia, LaJeunesse Todd C, Voolstra Christian R
Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) Red Sea Research Center King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Thuwal Saudi Arabia.
Center for Genomics and Systems Biology New York University Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates.
J Biogeogr. 2017 Mar;44(3):674-686. doi: 10.1111/jbi.12913. Epub 2017 Jan 2.
Coral reefs rely on the symbiosis between scleractinian corals and intracellular, photosynthetic dinoflagellates of the genus making the assessment of symbiont diversity critical to our understanding of ecological resilience of these ecosystems. This study characterizes diversity around the Arabian Peninsula, which contains some of the most thermally diverse and understudied reefs on Earth.
Shallow water coral reefs throughout the Red Sea (RS), Sea of Oman (SO), and Persian/Arabian Gulf (PAG).
Next-generation sequencing of the ITS2 marker gene was used to assess community composition and diversity comprising 892 samples from 46 hard and soft coral genera.
Corals were associated with a large diversity of , which usually consisted of one or two prevalent symbiont types and many types at low abundance. communities were strongly structured according to geographical region and to a lesser extent by coral host identity. Overall symbiont communities were composed primarily of species from clade A and C in the RS, clade A, C, and D in the SO, and clade C and D in the PAG, representing a gradual shift from C- to D-dominated coral hosts. The analysis of symbiont diversity in an Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU)-based framework allowed the identification of differences in symbiont taxon richness over geographical regions and host genera.
Our study represents a comprehensive overview over biogeography and molecular diversity of in the Arabian Seas, where coral reefs thrive in one of the most extreme environmental settings on the planet. As such our data will serve as a baseline for further exploration into the effects of environmental change on host-symbiont pairings and the identification and ecological significance of types from regions already experiencing 'Future Ocean' conditions.
造礁石珊瑚与细胞内光合甲藻的共生关系是珊瑚礁形成的基础，因此评估共生体多样性对于理解这些生态系统的生态恢复力至关重要。本研究对阿拉伯半岛周围的共生体多样性进行了表征，该地区拥有地球上一些温度差异最大且研究较少的珊瑚礁。
红海（RS）、阿曼海（SO）和波斯湾/阿拉伯湾（PAG）的浅水珊瑚礁。
使用ITS2标记基因的下一代测序技术评估共生体群落组成和多样性，共分析了来自46个硬珊瑚和软珊瑚属的892个样本。
珊瑚与种类繁多的共生体相关联，通常由一两种优势共生体类型和许多低丰度类型组成。共生体群落根据地理区域有很强的结构差异，在较小程度上也受珊瑚宿主种类的影响。总体而言，RS的共生体群落主要由A和C类群的物种组成，SO的由A、C和D类群组成，PAG的由C和D类群组成，这表明珊瑚宿主从以C类群为主逐渐转变为以D类群为主。基于操作分类单元（OTU）框架对共生体多样性的分析，能够识别不同地理区域和宿主属之间共生体分类丰富度的差异。
我们的研究全面概述了阿拉伯海共生体的生物地理学和分子多样性，这里的珊瑚礁在地球上最极端的环境之一中蓬勃发展。因此，我们的数据将作为进一步探索环境变化对宿主 - 共生体配对的影响以及识别已经经历“未来海洋”条件地区共生体类型及其生态意义的基线。
