Paraclostridium is the Main Genus of Anaerobic Bacteria Isolated from New Species of the Marine Sponge Plakina in the Brazilian Southeast Coast.

Despite the broad assessment of sponge bacterial diversity through cultivation-independent and dependent strategies, the knowledge focusing on cultivable anaerobes from this holobiont is still incipient. Plakina is a genus with the highest number of described species from the smallest of poriferan classes, Homoscleromorpha. The Brazilian Atlantic coast has been presenting itself as a hotspot for the discovery of new plakinidae species, with initial surveys just now concerning to characterize their microbiome. The current study aimed to isolate and identify strict anaerobes from recently described species of Plakina collected at the coast of Cabo Frio, RJ. Samples of four sympatric morphotypes of Plakina cyanorosea and Plakina cabofriense were collected on the coast of Cabo Frio, RJ. Using five different culture media, a total of 93 bacterial isolates were recovered, among which 60 were strict anaerobes and, ultimately, 34 remaining viable. A total of 76.5% from these strains were mostly identified as Clostridium bifermentans by mass spectrometry and 82.4% identified by 16S rRNA sequencing, almost all of them affiliated to the genus Paraclostridium, and with one isolate identified as Clostridium butyricum by both techniques. None of the anaerobic bacteria exhibited antimicrobial activity by the adopted screening test. The present work highlights not only the need for cultivation and characterization of the anaerobic microbiota from marine sponges but also adds the existing scarce knowledge of culturable bacterial communities from Homoscleromorph sponges from Brazilian coast.