Abstract
Marine sponges are generally classified as high microbial abundance (HMA) and low microbial abundance (LMA) species. Here, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was applied to investigate the diversity, specificity and transcriptional activity of microbes associated with an LMA sponge (Stylissa carteri), an HMA sponge (Xestospongia testudinaria) and sea water collected from the central Saudi Arabia coast of the Red Sea. Altogether, 887 068 denoised sequences were obtained, of which 806 661 sequences remained after quality control. This resulted in 1477 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that were assigned to 27 microbial phyla. The microbial composition of S. carteri was more similar to that of sea water than to that of X. testudinaria, which is consistent with the observation that the sequence data set of S. carteri contained many more possibly sea water sequences (~24%) than the X. testudinaria data set (~6%). The most abundant OTUs were shared between all three sources (S. carteri, X. testudinaria, sea water), while rare OTUs were unique to any given source. Despite this high degree of overlap, each sponge species contained its own specific microbiota. The X. testudinaria-specific bacterial taxa were similar to those already described for this species. A set of S. carteri-specific bacterial taxa related to Proteobacteria and Nitrospira was identified, which are likely permanently associated with S. carteri. The transcriptional activity of sponge-associated microorganisms correlated well with their abundance. Quantitative PCR revealed the presence of Poribacteria, representing typical sponge symbionts, in both sponge species and in sea water; however, low transcriptional activity in sea water suggested that Poribacteria are not active outside the host context. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1348-1363 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Molecular Ecology |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 20 2013 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: We thank the Coastal and Marine Resources Core Lab and the Biosciences Core Laboratory at KAUST. We acknowledge Susanne Schmitt for suggestion of PCR primers and Eva Reisberg for interesting discussions. The insightful comments of three anonymous reviewers have improved the quality of our manuscript. LM-S was supported by a grant of the German Excellence Initiative to the Graduate School of Life Sciences, University of Wuerzburg. Additional financial support was provided by KAUST baseline funds to TR.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Genetics