Pyrosequencing reveals highly diverse and species-specific microbial communities in sponges from the Red Sea

Abstract

Marine sponges are associated with a remarkable array of microorganisms. Using a tag pyrosequencing technology, this study was the first to investigate in depth the microbial communities associated with three Red Sea sponges, Hyrtios erectus, Stylissa carteri and Xestospongia testudinaria. We revealed highly diverse sponge-associated bacterial communities with up to 1000 microbial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and richness estimates of up to 2000 species. Altogether, 26 bacterial phyla were detected from the Red Sea sponges, 11 of which were absent from the surrounding sea water and 4 were recorded in sponges for the first time. Up to 100 OTUs with richness estimates of up to 300 archaeal species were revealed from a single sponge species. This is by far the highest archaeal diversity ever recorded for sponges. A non-negligible proportion of unclassified reads was observed in sponges. Our results demonstrated that the sponge-associated microbial communities remained highly consistent in the same sponge species from different locations, although they varied at different degrees among different sponge species. A significant proportion of the tag sequences from the sponges could be assigned to one of the sponge-specific clusters previously defined. In addition, the sponge-associated microbial communities were consistently divergent from those present in the surrounding sea water. Our results suggest that the Red Sea sponges possess highly sponge-specific or even sponge-species-specific microbial communities that are resistant to environmental disturbance, and much of their microbial diversity remains to be explored.

Host-specificity among abundant and rare taxa in the sponge microbiome

“…Sponge-specific and species-specific symbiont associations Our analyses confirmed a clear sponge-specific and species-specific signature of bacterial community composition, in agreement with previous studies employing less sequencing coverage (Webster et al, 2010;Erwin et al, 2011Erwin et al, , 2012Lee et al, 2011;Webster and Taylor, 2012). Sponge samples stored in a variety of ways also clustered by species, suggesting the signal override the preservatives, as previously shown (Simister et al, 2011).…”

“…Deep sequencing with next-generation platforms has revealed bacterial diversity that is unparalleled in any invertebrate host and approaches the complexity of the human gut (Webster et al, 2010). In line with the previously described 'spongespecific' clusters (Hentschel et al, 2002;Taylor et al, 2007a), studies using next-generation sequencing have shown sponge-specific bacterial communities in a number of sponge species (Lee et al, 2011;Schmitt et al, 2012). In addition, the observation of specific microbial communities at finer host phylogenetic levels, for example, within each sponge species (Lee et al, 2011), suggests potential host-symbiont co-speciation.…”

Bacterial Communities in a Full-scale Combined A/O+BIOFOR System Treating Pharmaceutical Wastewater

“…Similar results were obtained in previous studies, which found that Proteobacteria were the dominant members of wastewater microbial communities [15][16][17][18][19]. Previous studies also suggested that the most diverse group of bacteria in 6-and 12-dayold biofilms was Proteobacteria [20][21]. The Gramnegative Proteobacteria are a major group of bacteria encompassing a wide variety of aerobic, anaerobic, and facultative bacteria [22] that are able to degrade a broad spectrum of organic contaminants and enable biological nitrogen and phosphorus removal [23].…”

Spatial variability of microbial communities of the coralline demosponge Astrosclera willeyana across the Indo-Pacific

“…This was also the first study on Red Sea sponges with a very high number of selected clones. Phyla commonly associated with marine sponges dominated in the microbial community of A. willeyana (Taylor et al 2007; however, these phyla were significantly differentiated from the communities associated with other Red Sea sponges that had previously been studied using a similar 16S rRNA cloning approach (Hentschel et al 2002, Oren et al 2005, Radwan et al 2010, Lee et al 2011. The level of diversity could be compared with the microbiota of Red Sea Hyrtios erectus (42 selected clones), but this symbiotic community revealed members of Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, TM7, and Betaproteobacteria (Radwan et al 2010), and lacked bacteria of an uncertain affiliation that were found in the Red Sea A. willeyana.…”

“…However, from among the ca. 240 sponge species recorded from the Red Sea (Radwan et al 2010), the microbial communities of only a few species have been investigated to date (Hentschel et al 2002, Oren et al 2005, Radwan et al 2010, Lee et al 2011. Our investigations on the microbial community of A. willeyana gave the first ever insight into the microbiota of coralline sponges from the Red Sea.…”