Succession and Colonization Dynamics of Endolithic Phototrophs within Intertidal Carbonates

This study was conducted to examine the ecological succession of microbial phototrophs within intertidal carbonates. We wanted to examine if anoxygenic phototrophs act as pioneer borers (euendoliths) or are secondary colonizers. We also wanted to apply molecular techniques to explore bacteria colonization in hard carbonates, which had not previously been done. Virgin commercial travertine paver tiles were anchored onto beachrock approximately 5 m from high tide, and sacrificially collected at 3, 6, and 9-month intervals. This Bioproject contains Illumina MiSeq 2x300 16S rRNA gene amplicon [V3-V4 primer set: 341F (5'-CCTACGGGNGGCWGCAG) and 806R (5'-GGACTACVSGGGTATCTAAT)]. The dataset contains a set of control tiles (Cx), and three different sets of tiles collected at different time points (S1 - 3 months, S2 - 6 months, S3 - 9 months). We found that APBs are not in fact borers, and that early in the colonization, a novel group of cyanobacteria (UBC) without cultivated representatives, emerged as the most common euendolith, but by six months canonical euendoliths such as Plectonema (Leptolyngbya) sp., Mastigocoleus sp., and Pleurocapsalean clades displaced UBC in dominance. Later, the proportion of all euendolithic cyanobacterial biomass decreased, as non-boring endoliths outcompeted pioneers within the excavated substrate