Microbial Community Shifts Associated With the Ongoing Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Outbreak on the Florida Reef Tract

Overview

Journal Front Microbiol

Specialty Microbiology

Date 2019 Oct 15

PMID 31608047

Citations 53

Authors

Julie L Meyer

Jessy Castellanos-Gell

Greta S Aeby

Claudia C Hase

Blake Ushijima

Valerie J Paul

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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.

Citing Articles

Discovery of Peptidic Siderophore Degradation by Screening Natural Product Profiles in Marine-Derived Bacterial Mono- and Cocultures.

Monge-Loria M, Zhong W, Abrahamse N, Hartter S, Garg N Biochemistry. 2025; 64(3):634-654.

PMID: 39807563 PMC: 11800396. DOI: 10.1021/acs.biochem.4c00706.

Coral high molecular weight carbohydrates support opportunistic microbes in bacterioplankton from an algae-dominated reef.

Thobor B, Haas A, Wild C, Nelson C, Wegley Kelly L, Hehemann J mSystems. 2024; 9(11):e0083224.

PMID: 39436143 PMC: 11575353. DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00832-24.

Cold-water coral mortality under ocean warming is associated with pathogenic bacteria.

Chemel M, Peru E, Binsarhan M, Logares R, Lartaud F, Galand P Environ Microbiome. 2024; 19(1):76.

PMID: 39407340 PMC: 11481251. DOI: 10.1186/s40793-024-00622-0.

Climate adaptive loci revealed by seascape genomics correlate with phenotypic variation in heat tolerance of the coral Acropora millepora.

Denis H, Selmoni O, Gossuin H, Jauffrais T, Butler C, Lecellier G Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):22179.

PMID: 39333135 PMC: 11436834. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-67971-1.

Microbiomes of three coral species in the Mexican Caribbean and their shifts associated with the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease.

Arriaga-Pinon Z, Aguayo-Leyva J, Alvarez-Filip L, Banaszak A, Aguirre-Macedo M, Paz-Garcia D PLoS One. 2024; 19(8):e0304925.

PMID: 39186575 PMC: 11346732. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304925.

References

McMurdie P, Holmes S . phyloseq: an R package for reproducible interactive analysis and graphics of microbiome census data. PLoS One. 2013; 8(4):e61217. PMC: 3632530. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061217. View

Weil E, Smith G, Gil-Agudelo D . Status and progress in coral reef disease research. Dis Aquat Organ. 2006; 69(1):1-7. DOI: 10.3354/dao069001. View

Har J, Helbig T, Lim J, Fernando S, Reitzel A, Penn K . Microbial diversity and activity in the Nematostella vectensis holobiont: insights from 16S rRNA gene sequencing, isolate genomes, and a pilot-scale survey of gene expression. Front Microbiol. 2015; 6:818. PMC: 4557100. DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2015.00818. View

Roder C, Arif C, Bayer T, Aranda M, Daniels C, Shibl A . Bacterial profiling of White Plague Disease in a comparative coral species framework. ISME J. 2013; 8(1):31-9. PMC: 3869008. DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2013.127. View

Dunphy C, Gouhier T, Chu N, Vollmer S . Structure and stability of the coral microbiome in space and time. Sci Rep. 2019; 9(1):6785. PMC: 6494856. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-43268-6. View

Denner E, Smith G, Busse H, Schumann P, Narzt T, Polson S . Aurantimonas coralicida gen. nov., sp. nov., the causative agent of white plague type II on Caribbean scleractinian corals. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2003; 53(Pt 4):1115-1122. DOI: 10.1099/ijs.0.02359-0. View

Manzello D . Rapid Recent Warming of Coral Reefs in the Florida Keys. Sci Rep. 2015; 5:16762. PMC: 4645222. DOI: 10.1038/srep16762. View

Webster N, Cobb R, Negri A . Temperature thresholds for bacterial symbiosis with a sponge. ISME J. 2008; 2(8):830-42. DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2008.42. View

Ushijima B, Videau P, Burger A, Shore-Maggio A, Runyon C, Sudek M . Vibrio coralliilyticus strain OCN008 is an etiological agent of acute Montipora white syndrome. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2014; 80(7):2102-9. PMC: 3993142. DOI: 10.1128/AEM.03463-13. View

10.

Everett K, Thao M, Horn M, Dyszynski G, Baumann P . Novel chlamydiae in whiteflies and scale insects: endosymbionts 'Candidatus Fritschea bemisiae' strain Falk and 'Candidatus Fritschea eriococci' strain Elm. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2005; 55(Pt 4):1581-1587. DOI: 10.1099/ijs.0.63454-0. View

11.

Parada A, Needham D, Fuhrman J . Every base matters: assessing small subunit rRNA primers for marine microbiomes with mock communities, time series and global field samples. Environ Microbiol. 2015; 18(5):1403-14. DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.13023. View

12.

Chu N, Vollmer S . Caribbean corals house shared and host-specific microbial symbionts over time and space. Environ Microbiol Rep. 2016; 8(4):493-500. DOI: 10.1111/1758-2229.12412. View

13.

Pollock F, McMinds R, Smith S, Bourne D, Willis B, Medina M . Coral-associated bacteria demonstrate phylosymbiosis and cophylogeny. Nat Commun. 2018; 9(1):4921. PMC: 6250698. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07275-x. View

14.

Garren M, Raymundo L, Guest J, Harvell C, Azam F . Resilience of coral-associated bacterial communities exposed to fish farm effluent. PLoS One. 2009; 4(10):e7319. PMC: 2751826. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007319. View

15.

Mera H, Bourne D . Disentangling causation: complex roles of coral-associated microorganisms in disease. Environ Microbiol. 2017; 20(2):431-449. DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.13958. View

16.

Sunagawa S, DeSantis T, Piceno Y, Brodie E, DeSalvo M, Voolstra C . Bacterial diversity and White Plague Disease-associated community changes in the Caribbean coral Montastraea faveolata. ISME J. 2009; 3(5):512-21. DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2008.131. View

17.

Patterson K, Porter J, Ritchie K, Polson S, Mueller E, Peters E . The etiology of white pox, a lethal disease of the Caribbean elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002; 99(13):8725-30. PMC: 124366. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.092260099. View

18.

Wrighton K, Thomas B, Sharon I, Miller C, Castelle C, VerBerkmoes N . Fermentation, hydrogen, and sulfur metabolism in multiple uncultivated bacterial phyla. Science. 2012; 337(6102):1661-5. DOI: 10.1126/science.1224041. View

19.

Ushijima B, Richards G, Watson M, Schubiger C, Hase C . Factors affecting infection of corals and larval oysters by Vibrio coralliilyticus. PLoS One. 2018; 13(6):e0199475. PMC: 6007914. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199475. View

20.

Campbell B, Engel A, Porter M, Takai K . The versatile epsilon-proteobacteria: key players in sulphidic habitats. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2006; 4(6):458-68. DOI: 10.1038/nrmicro1414. View