Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Qld, Australia.
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic., Australia.
Mol Ecol. 2019 Aug;28(16):3830-3843. doi: 10.1111/mec.15187. Epub 2019 Aug 10.
The bacterial and microalgal endosymbiont (Symbiodiniaceae spp.) communities associated with corals have important roles in their health and resilience, yet little is known about the factors driving their succession during early coral life stages. Using 16S rRNA gene and ITS2 metabarcoding, we compared these communities in four Acropora coral species and their hybrids obtained from two laboratory crosses (Acropora tenuis × Acropora loripes and Acropora sarmentosa × Acropora florida) across the parental, recruit (7 months old) and juvenile (2 years old) life stages. We tested whether microbiomes differed between (a) life stages, (b) hybrids and purebreds, and (c) treatment conditions (ambient/elevated temperature and pCO ). Microbial communities of early life stage corals were highly diverse, lacked host specificity and were primarily determined by treatment conditions. Over time, a winnowing process occurred, and distinct microbial communities developed between the two species pair crosses by 2 years of age, irrespective of hybrid or purebred status. These findings suggest that the microbial communities of corals have a period of flexibility prior to adulthood, which can be valuable to future research aimed at the manipulation of coral microbial communities.
与珊瑚共生的细菌和微藻内共生体（共生藻科 spp.）在珊瑚的健康和恢复力方面发挥着重要作用，但人们对它们在珊瑚早期生命阶段的演替过程中所受驱动因素知之甚少。本研究采用 16S rRNA 基因和 ITS2 宏条形码技术，比较了来自两个实验室杂交（Acropora tenuis×Acropora loripes 和 Acropora sarmentosa×Acropora florida）的 4 种 Acropora 珊瑚及其杂种在亲代、幼体（7 个月龄）和成体（2 年）阶段的共生体群落结构。本研究还测试了微生物组在以下方面是否存在差异：（a）生活阶段，（b）杂种和纯种，以及（c）处理条件（环境/高温和 pCO2）。早期珊瑚生活阶段的微生物群落高度多样化，缺乏宿主特异性，主要由处理条件决定。随着时间的推移，发生了一种筛选过程，到 2 年时，两个物种对杂交之间形成了独特的微生物群落，而与杂种或纯种状态无关。这些发现表明，珊瑚的微生物群落在成年之前有一个灵活的时期，这对于未来旨在操纵珊瑚微生物群落的研究具有重要意义。
