Prokaryotic communities associated with different habitats within coral animals

The diverse prokaryotic communities associated with reef-building corals may provideimportant ecological advantages to their threatened hosts. The consistency ofrelationships between corals and specific prokaryotes, however, is debated and thelocations where microbially mediated processes occur in the host are not yet resolved.Here, we used physical and chemical separation of coral mucus and tissue followed bysequencing of partial small subunit ribosomal RNA genes of bacteria and archaea todifferentiate the mucus- and tissue-specific core symbionts of five common Caribbeancorals (Porites astreoides, P. porites, Orbicella faveolata, Montastrea cavernosa andDiploria strigosa).