Reef sediments can act as a stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) vector

Sediment microbial communities were examined from an ex-situ stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) transmission experiment using the 16S V4 region. The experiment was conducted in Nov-Dec 2020 using donor corals Montastraea cavernosa and recipient corals M. cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata, and consisted of four treatments: healthy sediments, disease contact (no sediment samples), batch diseased sediments (generated with three entire infected donor colonies), and individual diseased sediments (generated with independent, 5 sq. cm donor coral fragments). This repository contains the raw .fastq files for all sequenced sediment samples from the experiment.