PRJNA490387
Bacterial communities in tissues and surficial mucus of the cold-water coral Paragorgia arborea
The microbiome is a community of microbial associates (viruses, bacteria, fungi, and archaea) within a particular host habitat. Corals contain a microbiome that interacts with the host and shifts in the microbiota structure due to environmental perturbations can lead to disease and mortality. Paragorgia arborea (an Atlantic cold-water octocoral) is a foundation species that provides a habitat to many invertebrate and fish species due to its arborescent morphology. Inhabiting deep benthic environments beyond the photic zone prevents this coral species from using photosynthetic algal symbionts (i.e. zooxanthellae) as a primary energy source and therefore requires a different feeding strategy. Deep benthic corals are heterotrophic, relying on chance capture of passing zooplankton and falling marine snow. Corals rely on microbial interactions to supplement various benefits to the host, including nutrient metabolism and recycling. As shifts in the microbiome can lead to disease and potential mortality, our goal is to understand what bacterial phylotypes make up the diversity in P. arborea during a visually healthy state. The bacterial 16S rRNA of P. arborea were extracted from both polyp tissue/skeleton and surficial mucus, sequenced using the V6-V8 hypervariable region on the Illumina platform (MiSeq), and analyzed as the first characterization of this coral.