Compositional and Quantitative Insights Into Bacterial and Archaeal Communities of South Pacific Deep-Sea Sponges (Demospongiae and Hexactinellida)

• Published in: Frontiers in Microbiology
• Main Authors: Steinert, Georg, Busch, Kathrin, Bayer, Kristina, Khodami, Sahar, Martinez Arbizu, Pedro, Kelly, Michelle, Mills, Sadie, Erpenbeck , Dirk, Dohrmann, Martin, Wörheide, Gert, Hentschel, Ute, Schupp, Peter J
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: 16S rRNA amplicons; archaea; bacteria; Demospongiae; Hexactinellida; Porifera; quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR); South Pacific Ocean; European Union (EU); Horizon 2020; Grant Agreement No 679849; Deep-sea Sponge Grounds Ecosystems of the North Atlantic: an integrated approach towards their preservation and sustainable exploitation; SponGES; Pacific; New Zealand; Sven; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4290886; https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00716

ABSTRACT In the present study, we profiled bacterial and archaeal communities from 13 phylogenetically diverse deep-sea sponge species (Demospongiae and Hexactinellida) from the South Pacific by 16S rRNA-gene amplicon sequencing. Additionally, the associated bacteria and archaea were quantified by real-time qPCR. Our results show that bacterial communities from the deep-sea sponges are mostly host-species specific similar to what has been observed for shallow-water demosponges. The archaeal deep-sea sponge community structures are different from the bacterial community structures in that they are almost completely dominated by a single family, which are the ammonia-oxidizing genera within the Nitrosopumilaceae. Remarkably, the archaeal communities are mostly specific to individual sponges (rather than sponge-species), and this observation applies to both hexactinellids and demosponges. Finally, archaeal 16s gene numbers, as detected by quantitative real-time PCR, were up to three orders of magnitude higher than in shallow-water sponges, highlighting the importance of the archaea for deep-sea sponges in general. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is dedicated to Hans Tore Rapp, coordinator of the H2020-SponGES project, mentor and friend. We thank Andrea Hethke, Ina Clefsen, and the CRC1182 Z3 team (Katja Cloppenborg-Schmidt, Malte Rühlemann, John Baines) for assistance with the amplicon pipeline. We greatly acknowledge the crew and scientific party of RV Sonne cruise SO254, as well as the ROV Kiel 6000 team for their valuable support at sea. We also thank Sven Rohde, Tessa Clemens and the entire benthic invertebrate team of the RV Sonne Cruise SO254 for their assistance in sample collection, processing and cataloging. We thank Henry Reiswig for advice on identification of hexactinellid samples. Sample collection was carried out under the "Application for consent to conduct marine scientific research in areas under national jurisdiction of New Zealand (dated 7.6.2016)." This is publication 68 of Senckenberg am Meer ...