Viral metagenomic investigation of the Caribbean echinoderm Holothuria floridana collected in Marathon, Florida on 25 Aug 2023

Echinoderms play crucial roles in coral reef ecosystems, where they are significant detritivores and herbivores. The phylum is widely known for its boom and bust cycles, driven by food availability, predation pressure and mass mortalities. Hence, surveillance of potential pathogens and associates of grossly normal specimens is important to understanding their roles in ecology and mass mortality. We performed viral surveillance of the coral reef echinoderm Holothuria floridana (urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:210900), using metagenomics. Grossly normal H. floridana specimens were collected from a reef in Florida. Viral metagenomes were assembled and aligned against viral genomes and protein encoding regions. Metagenomic reads and previously sequenced transcriptomes were further investigated for putative viral elements by Kraken2. H. floridana yielded viral taxa similar to those found in other sea cucumbers, including Pisoniviricetes (Picornaviruses), Ellioviricetes (Bunyaviruses), and Magsaviricetes (Nodaviruses). This dataset includes the accession information for the sequences performed and archived at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive.