Microbial diversity in four Mediterranean irciniid sponges

These data are from sponge samples collected in Crete, Greece. The examined sponges all belong to Demospongiae (Class); Keratosa (Subclass); Dictyoceratida (Order); Irciniidae (Family). Four sponge species were examined: Ircinia oros (Schmidt, 1864), Ircinia variabilis (Schmidt, 1862), Sarcotragus spinosulus Schmidt, 1862 and Sarcotragus fasciculatus (Pallas, 1766). They have undergone metabarcoding for the V5-V6 region of the 16S rRNA. Samples were collected by scuba diving at depths between 6-12m from two sampling sites of rocky formations at the northern coast of Crete (Cretan Sea, Eastern Mediterranean). All the raw sequence files of this study were submitted to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) with the study accession number PRJEB23640 (available at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB23640)