Bacterial composition of deep-water hexactinellid and demosponges from New Zealand collected during SONNE cruise SO254

During R/V Sonne cruise SO254 around New Zealand (January-February 2017), deep-sea sponges were incubated in-situ and ex-situ to measure oxygen consumption, inorganic nutrient fluxes, bacterial and phospholipid-derived fatty acid (PLFA) composition. Bacteria community composition of 4 species (number of replicates per species: 1) were analyzed based on DNA extracted from sub-samples taken from the sponges at the end of the incubations. After sequencing, representative amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) were classified taxonomically with the SILVA database.