Meyer Julie L, Castellanos-Gell Jessy, Aeby Greta S, Häse Claudia C, Ushijima Blake, Paul Valerie J
Soil and Water Sciences Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Smithsonian Marine Station, Fort Pierce, FL, United States.
Front Microbiol. 2019 Sep 24;10:2244. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019.02244. eCollection 2019.
As many as 22 of the 45 coral species on the Florida Reef Tract are currently affected by stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). The ongoing disease outbreak was first observed in 2014 in Southeast Florida near Miami and as of early 2019 has been documented from the northernmost reaches of the reef tract in Martin County down to Key West. We examined the microbiota associated with disease lesions and apparently healthy tissue on diseased colonies of , , , and . Analysis of differentially abundant taxa between disease lesions and apparently healthy tissue identified five unique amplicon sequence variants enriched in the diseased tissue in three of the coral species (all except , namely an unclassified genus of Flavobacteriales and sequences identified as , , , and . In addition, several groups of likely opportunistic or saprophytic colonizers such as Epsilonbacteraeota, Patescibacteria, Clostridiales, Bacteroidetes, and Rhodobacterales were also enriched in SCTLD disease lesions. This work represents the first microbiological characterization of SCTLD, as an initial step toward identifying the potential pathogen(s) responsible for SCTLD.
佛罗里达礁区的45种珊瑚物种中，多达22种目前受到石珊瑚组织损失病（SCTLD）的影响。这种持续的疾病爆发于2014年首次在迈阿密附近的佛罗里达州东南部被观察到，截至2019年初，从礁区最北端的马丁县到基韦斯特都有记录。我们检查了与、、和患病群体上的疾病病变以及看似健康的组织相关的微生物群。对疾病病变和看似健康的组织之间差异丰富的分类群进行分析，在三种珊瑚物种（除了之外的所有物种）的患病组织中鉴定出五个独特的扩增子序列变体，即黄杆菌目的一个未分类属以及被鉴定为、、和的序列。此外，几组可能的机会性或腐生性定殖菌，如ε-变形菌门、帕氏菌门、梭菌目、拟杆菌门和红杆菌目，在SCTLD疾病病变中也有所富集。这项工作代表了SCTLD的首次微生物学特征描述，是朝着识别导致SCTLD的潜在病原体迈出的第一步。
