Climate change alters the haemolymph microbiome of oysters.

• Main Authors: Scanes, E, Parker, LM, Seymour, JR, Siboni, N, King, WL, Danckert, NP, Wegner, KM, Dove, MC, O'Connor, WA, Ross, PM
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier BV 2021
• Subjects: Marine Biology & Hydrobiology; Animals; Carbon Dioxide; Climate Change; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; Microbiota; Ostreidae; RNA; Ribosomal; 16S; Seawater; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10453/147170

The wellbeing of marine organisms is connected to their microbiome. Oysters are a vital food source and provide ecological services, yet little is known about how climate change such as ocean acidification and warming will affect their microbiome. We exposed the Sydney rock oyster, Saccostrea glomerata, to orthogonal combinations of temperature (24, 28 °C) and pCO 2 (400 and 1000 μatm) for eight weeks and used amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA (V3-V4) gene to characterise the bacterial community in haemolymph. Overall, elevated pCO 2 and temperature interacted to alter the microbiome of oysters, with a clear partitioning of treatments in CAP ordinations. Elevated pCO 2 was the strongest driver of species diversity and richness and elevated temperature also increased species richness. Climate change, both ocean acidification and warming, will alter the microbiome of S. glomerata which may increase the susceptibility of oysters to disease.