Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 16, Issue 10, Pages 3345-3359Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.12366
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Funding
- Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS), AIMS@JCU
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef (James Cook University)
- Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Mexico (CONACYT) (Mexico)
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Diazotrophic bacteria potentially play an important functional role in supplying fixed nitrogen to the coral holobiont, but the value of such a partnership depends on the stability of the association. Here we evaluate the composition of diazotroph assemblages associated with the coral Acropora millepora throughout four seasons and at two reefs, an inshore and an offshore (mid-shelf) reef on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Amplicon pyrosequencing of the nifH gene revealed that diazotrophs are ubiquitous members of the bacterial community associated with A.millepora. Rhizobia (65% of the overall nifH sequences retrieved) and particularly Bradyrhizobia sp.-affiliated sequences (>50% of rhizobia sequences) dominated diazotrophic assemblages across all coral samples from the two sites throughout the year. In contrast to this consistency in the spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence of diazotroph assemblages, the overall coral-associated bacterial community, assessed through amplicon sequencing of the general bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene, differed between inshore and mid-shelf reef locations. Sequences associated with the Oceanospirillales family, particularly with Endozoicomonas sp., dominated bacterial communities associated with inshore corals. Although rhizobia represented a variable and generally small fraction of the overall bacterial community associated with A.millepora, consistency in the structure of these diazotrophic assemblages suggests that they have a functional role in the coral holobiont.
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