Microbiome Characterization of Port Everglades Inlet

Nova Southeastern University was funded for two years to conduct a study of microbial communities to characterize Port Everglades Inlet and reef microbiomes with the standard 16S rRNA gene marker. Phase 1 was completed in June 2020. This report summarizes Phase 2 of the same CRCP project that began in 2020 using essentially the same exact collection and laboratory methods, sampling sites and computational analyses. The latter combines DNA sequencing with traditional and novel water chemistry analyses to determine the following overarching goals a comprehensive spatial profile of the microbial communities and potential pathogens present in PEI sediments, and adjacent Florida coral reef sediments, and begin cursory analyses that may link sediment parameters with microbiome profiles. We realize that the port must be periodically dredged in order to accommodate ship traffic, and so part of the Phase 2 project design was to characterize PEI microbes after regular operations and maintenance dredging, OED, was carried out. This activity necessarily disturbs bottom sediment which can be resuspended and transported to the reef and other natural habitats. Therefore, we have used state of the art microbial genetics methods, such as high throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicon variants, in order to profile the alpha and beta diversity of sediment microbiomes found within PEI and the adjacent coral reefs.