Pyrosequencing Reveals the Microbial Communities in the Red Sea Sponge Carteriospongia foliascens and Their Impressive Shifts in Abnormal Tissues

Abstract

Abnormality and disease in sponges have been widely reported, yet how sponge-associated microbes respond correspondingly remains inconclusive. Here, individuals of the sponge Carteriospongia foliascens under abnormal status were collected from the Rabigh Bay along the Red Sea coast. Microbial communities in both healthy and abnormal sponge tissues and adjacent seawater were compared to check the influences of these abnormalities on sponge-associated microbes. In healthy tissues, we revealed low microbial diversity with less than 100 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) per sample. Cyanobacteria, affiliated mainly with the sponge-specific species "Candidatus Synechococcus spongiarum," were the dominant bacteria, followed by Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. Intraspecies dynamics of microbial communities in healthy tissues were observed among sponge individuals, and potential anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria were found. In comparison with healthy tissues and the adjacent seawater, abnormal tissues showed dramatic increase in microbial diversity and decrease in the abundance of sponge-specific microbial clusters. The dominated cyanobacterial species Candidatus Synechococcus spongiarum decreased and shifted to unspecific cyanobacterial clades. OTUs that showed high similarity to sequences derived from diseased corals, such as Leptolyngbya sp., were found to be abundant in abnormal tissues. Heterotrophic Planctomycetes were also specifically enriched in abnormal tissues. Overall, we revealed the microbial communities of the cyanobacteria-rich sponge, C. foliascens, and their impressive shifts under abnormality.

The Cyanobacteria-Dominated Sponge Dactylospongia elegans in the South China Sea: Prokaryotic Community and Metagenomic Insights

“…The prokaryotic communities of four sponge individuals showed no obvious discrepancies at the phylum level and were consistently predominated by Proteobacteria. However, the relative abundance of OTUs was divergent among sponge individuals, and nMDS analysis further discriminated sponge-associated prokaryotic communities into three groups (Figure 5 and Supplementary Figure 6), which indicated intra-species variations of prokaryotic communities and probably owed to their different microenvironments (Gao et al, 2014a; Hardoim and Costa, 2014). On the other hand, the cyanobacterial symbiont “ Ca .…”

Elevated seawater temperature disrupts the microbiome of an ecologically important bioeroding sponge

“…However, the increase in Cyanobacteria did not correspond to known sponge symbionts, such as Oscillatoria spongeliae or Synechococcus spongiarum (Erwin & Thacker, ; Lemloh, Fromont, Brümmer, & Usher, ), but were instead driven largely by a tenfold increase in filamentous, heterocystous Cyanobacteria similar to the genus Rivularia . In another sponge species, Rivularia is associated with unhealthy tissues (Gao et al., ). Thus, the increase in filamentous Cyanobacteria is likely opportunistic, occurring in response to greater nutrient availability in bleached sponges or changes in the host surface chemistry, which may have facilitated cyanobacterial colonization, as has been seen in other reef organisms (Webster, Soo, Cobb, & Negri, ).…”

Characterization of Leucetta prolifera, a calcarean cyanosponge from south-western Australia, and its symbionts

“…Members of this genus are capable of nitrogen fixation (Eichner et al, 2014) and have previously been reported from other sponges, e.g. in diseased tissue of Carteriospongia foliascens (Pallas, 1766) (Gao et al, 2014). It appears that photosymbiosis is more common and symbiont diversity is higher in demosponges than in calcareous sponges (Díaz, 1999;Díaz et al, 2007;Thacker & Freeman, 2012).…”