Decline of a distinct coral reef holobiont community under ocean acidification.

Autor: Williams J; Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK.; Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, NW1 4RY, UK., Pettorelli N; Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, NW1 4RY, UK., Hartmann AC; Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA., Quinn RA; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA., Plaisance L; Laboratoire Evolution Et Diversité Biologique, CNRS/UPS, Toulouse, France.; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013, USA., O'Mahoney M; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013, USA., Meyer CP; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013, USA., Fabricius KE; Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia., Knowlton N; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013, USA., Ransome E; Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK. e.ransome@imperial.ac.uk.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Microbiome [Microbiome] 2024 Apr 17; Vol. 12 (1), pp. 75. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Apr 17.
DOI: 10.1186/s40168-023-01683-y
Abstrakt: Background: Microbes play vital roles across coral reefs both in the environment and inside and upon macrobes (holobionts), where they support critical functions such as nutrition and immune system modulation. These roles highlight the potential ecosystem-level importance of microbes, yet most knowledge of microbial functions on reefs is derived from a small set of holobionts such as corals and sponges. Declining seawater pH - an important global coral reef stressor - can cause ecosystem-level change on coral reefs, providing an opportunity to study the role of microbes at this scale. We use an in situ experimental approach to test the hypothesis that under such ocean acidification (OA), known shifts among macrobe trophic and functional groups may drive a general ecosystem-level response extending across macrobes and microbes, leading to reduced distinctness between the benthic holobiont community microbiome and the environmental microbiome.
Results: We test this hypothesis using genetic and chemical data from benthic coral reef community holobionts sampled across a pH gradient from CO 2 seeps in Papua New Guinea. We find support for our hypothesis; under OA, the microbiome and metabolome of the benthic holobiont community become less compositionally distinct from the sediment microbiome and metabolome, suggesting that benthic macrobe communities are colonised by environmental microbes to a higher degree under OA conditions. We also find a simplification and homogenisation of the benthic photosynthetic community, and an increased abundance of fleshy macroalgae, consistent with previously observed reef microbialisation.
Conclusions: We demonstrate a novel structural shift in coral reefs involving macrobes and microbes: that the microbiome of the benthic holobiont community becomes less distinct from the sediment microbiome under OA. Our findings suggest that microbialisation and the disruption of macrobe trophic networks are interwoven general responses to environmental stress, pointing towards a universal, undesirable, and measurable form of ecosystem changed. Video Abstract.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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