Microbiome structure of nursery reared Acropora cervicornis from north Little Cayman

The intention of this study is to define the microbiome structure of nursery-reared Acropora cervicornis from north Little Cayman with two objectives: 1) Characterize the microbiome of A. cervicornis from a central Caribbean nursery. 2) Determine the spatial structure and heterogeneity of the microbiome within and between colonies. Samples were taken from three distinct locations (basal branch, intermediate branch, or branch tip) over three replicate colonies and three genotypes. Bacterial and archaeal community composition were determined by sequencing 16S rRNA genes with Illumina Miseq.