Microbial communities associated with two populations of the sponge Chondrilla nucula under current and expected climate change conditions in the Aegean sea
The study aimed at investigating the contribution of symbiotic communities to the response of sessile marine organisms to climate change. Specifically, we focussed on bacterial and fungal communities associated with the sponge Chondrilla nucula, two populations of which were collected from the North and The South Aegean Sea and were subjected to a common-garden experiment. The experiment simulated a climate change scenario based on the "high GHG emissions" RCP 8.5 scenario of IPCC. At the end of the 3-month experiment, sponge tissue was used to extract DNA of the associated microsymbionts, and a total of 24 libraries (3 climate conditions, 2 populations, 4 biological replicates) along with 6 controls (water from experimental tanks, extraction and PCR blanks) was sequenced with Illumina MIseq technology for 16S rRNA amplicons (V3-V4 region, to identify bacteria) and with MinIon Nanopore for a 5.5 Kb amplicon spanning 18S, ITS and 28S genes (to identify fungi).