Manipulation of coral-associated microbiome

The decline of coral reefs due to anthropogenic disturbances is having devastating impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services.This project investigates the possibility of manipulating the microbiome associated with corals to augment their tolerance and resilience to stress. Larvae of the coral Acropora tenuis were reared in filtered seawater and exposed to the mucus collected from one of four different adult coral species (Acropora tenuis, Acropora sarmentosa, Galaxea astreata and Diploastrea heliopora) and to filtered seawater as a control. Four months after exposure, the recruits were sampled for 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Recruits from the five different treatments were found to harbor distinct microbial communities.