Geographical variations in bacterial communities associated with soft coral Scleronephthya gracillimum

摘要: Environmental impacts can alter relationships between a coral and its symbiotic microbial community. Furthermore, changes in the community associated with increased seawater temperatures cause opportunistic infections, disease death. Interactions soft corals their microbes are not well understood. The species Scleronephthya gracillimum is distributed tropical to temperate zones assemblages along Kuroshio Current region. In this study we collected S. from various sites at different latitudes, compared composition of bacterial communities using Next Generation Sequencing. Coral samples six geographically distinct areas (two each Taiwan, Japan, Korea) had considerable variation diversity. Endozoicimonaceae was dominant group Korea whereas Mycoplasma Taiwan corals. Interestingly, latter lower relative abundance Endozoicimonaceae, but greater These biogeographic differences may have been due varying environmental conditions among locations, or because host responses prevailing conditions. This provided baseline for future studies microbiomes, assessment functions metabolites holobionts.