Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Biodiversity Program, Taiwan International Graduate Program, Academia Sinica; National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Sci Rep. 2020 May 8;10(1):7808. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-64749-z.
Symbiodiniaceae communities in some corals often shuffle or switch after severe bleaching events, one of the major threats to coral survival in a world with climate change. In this study we reciprocally transplanted five Leptoria phrygia colonies between two sites with significantly different temperature regimes and monitored them for 12 months. Our ITS2 amplicon deep sequencing demonstrated that L. phrygia acclimatized to maintain a strong and stable association with Durusdinium D17, D. trenchii, and D. glynnii, but also remained flexible and formed a short-term association with different Cladocopium. Most interestingly, two colonies shuffled between Durusdinium and Cladocopium without the occurrence of bleaching; one colony even switched its dominant Cladocopium after generic shuffling. Both dominant Cladocopium were originally rare with relative abundances as low as 0.024%. This is the first record of adult corals switching dominant symbiont without bleaching.
共生藻群落中的一些珊瑚在经历严重白化事件后经常会发生演替或转换，这是气候变化背景下珊瑚生存的主要威胁之一。在这项研究中，我们在两个温度制度显著不同的地点之间对五个 Leptoria phrygia 群体进行了相互移植，并对其进行了 12 个月的监测。我们的 ITS2 扩增子深度测序表明，L. phrygia 适应了维持与 Durusdinium D17、D. trenchii 和 D. glynnii 的强烈而稳定的联系，但也保持了灵活性，并与不同的 Cladocopium 形成了短期联系。最有趣的是，两个群体在没有白化的情况下在 Durusdinium 和 Cladocopium 之间进行了演替；一个群体甚至在属演替后改变了其优势 Cladocopium。两个优势 Cladocopium 最初都很少见，相对丰度低至 0.024%。这是首例没有白化就发生成年珊瑚切换优势共生体的记录。
