Archaeal and bacterial communities of Xestospongia testudinaria and sediment differ in diversity, composition and predicted function in an Indonesian coral reef environment

Little is known about the microbial diversity, composition and predicted functional similarities and dissimilarities between prokaryotic kingdoms and among coral reef biotopes located in close spatial proximity to one other. In this study, we compared communities of Archaea and Bacteria in two distinct biotopes, namely, the sponge Xestospongia testudinaria and sediment of the Berau reef system, Indonesia. Using a 16S rRNA gene barcoded pyrosequencing approach and a recently developed predictive metagenomic approach (PICRUSt), we tested to what extent sediment and X. testudinaria host compositionally and functionally distinct communities of Archaea and Bacteria. Although Crenarchaeota (Archaea) and Proteobacteria (Bacteria) were the dominant phyla in the microbial communities of both sediment and sponge, there were significant differences in composition between them. Biotope proved to be the main identifiable factor affecting composition. In line with the compositional differences between sediment and sponge prokaryote communities, there were also differences in predicted functions. The archaeal and bacterial communities of sediment were enriched for functions associated with the Metabolism and Environmental Information Processing categories; those of X. testudinaria were enriched for functions associated with the Genetic Information Processing category. The significant levels of concordance between archaeal and bacterial communities and the similar enrichment of these communities in the same functional categories suggests a certain degree of functional redundancy between Archaea and Bacteria in the studied biotopes, which for the sponge may result in an increased resilience to environmental perturbations. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.