Habitat and ontogenetic-associated differences in the skin microbiome of two Stegastes damselfishes (Pomacentridae) from the eastern Caribbean Sea

Authors

Raquel Xavier¹ , Ana Pereira¹ , Andres Pagan¹ , Gina Hendrick² , Matthew Nicholson² , Daniela Rosado¹ , Marta Soares¹ , Marcos Perez-Losada³ , Paul Sikkel²

1. Cibio – InBio, University of Porto
2. Department of Biology, Arkansas State University
3. Computational Biology Institute, The George Washington University

Conference / event

The 39th AMLC Scientific Meeting, May 2019 (Punta Cana, Dominican Republic)

Poster summary

Juveniles and adults of two species of Stegastes damselfish were sampled in reef and lagoon habitats in Western Puerto Rico and Brewers Bay St Thomas, USVI. Skins were swabbed and the V4 hypervariable region of 16s rRNA gene was amplified. High intraspecific variability was found with locality and habitat type significantly influencing skin microbiome composition with several pathogenic taxa identified in samples collected from lagoon habitat. Increasing temperatures and anthropogenic impacts may increase abundance and impact of pathogenic bacteria in lower quality habitats (lagoons).

Keywords

symbiosis, microbiome, 16s RNA, marine ecology

Research areas

Ecology and Forestry

References

No data provided

Funding

1. National Science Foundation (No. OCE-1536794 (PC Sikkel, PI))
2. Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (No. PTDC/MAR-BIO/0902/2014-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016550)

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

All raw data produced in this study are available at the National Center For Biotechnology (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive under the project PRJNA 599608.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=599608

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2022 Xavier et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.