Longitudinal microbiomes of coral and near-coral seawater influenced by disease phase

For a decade, the lethal stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has caused dramatic declines in coral cover across the Caribbean. While there is some knowledge of how SCTLD affects the coral microbiome under diseased and healthy states, studies are confounded by colony-based genetic variation and site-based differences, and there is a lack of knowledge about how SCTLD impacts the microbiome of individual colonies through time and how this relates to the status of the disease on the reef. In order to track changes in the coral tissue and near-coral seawater microbiome as SCTLD progressed, we repeatedly sampled identical Colpophyllia natans colonies (6 per site) at two sites in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands through three disease phases (pre-disease, epidemic and endemic) and applied 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing that targets bacteria and archaea (3-11 timepoints of sampling per colony).