New Paper Out!

Hi Everyone,

We are excited to share that the results of this study have been published in FEMS microbiology ecology. We hope you will read the paper and let us know what you think!

A quick summary:

We infected corals with a slurry of white band disease in tanks and then sampled these experimentally infected corals through time, using 16S sequencing to characterize the bacterial communities.

We were able to quantify changes in the coral microbiome over time as corals became diseased. This allowed us to untangle microbes that may cause white band disease signs from microbes responding to the disease. We identified bacteria in the families Pasteurellaceae and Francisellaceae as the most likely bacterial pathogens, since they were present in the disease dose and they became more abundant right before corals began to display disease signs. While these bacteria may be pathogens causing white band disease, we found that there was a lot of variability in changes in the microbiome between corals, indicating that complex interactions between multiple bacteria may be involved in pathogenesis and that these may differ from coral to coral.

Our most exciting discovery to come out of this study is that bacteria in the genus Endozoicomonas were associated with certain healthy colonies of coral. Before these healthy colonies showed disease signs, Endozoicomonas became less abundant, indicating that they might be important in maintaining coral health. Preliminary results suggest that they may actually be more abundant in corals that are resistant to this disease. This result has direct applications to attempts to create healthier coral microbiomes and healthier coral reefs. We plan to continue to investigate the role of Endozoicomonas in coral disease resistance.

Thank you all for your support! Please let us know what you think of our findings and we will keep you posted on future research efforts.

Sarah and Felicia