Steinert, Georg, Busch, Kathrin, Bayer, Kristina , Kodami, Sahar, Arbizu, Pedro M., Kelly, Michelle, Mills, Sadie, Erpenbeck, Dirk, Dohrmann, Martin, Wörheide, Gert, Hentschel, Ute and Schupp, Peter J. (2020) Compositional and quantitative insights into bacterial and archaeal communities of South Pacific deep-sea sponges (Demospongiae and Hexactinellida. Frontiers in Microbiology, 11 . Art.Nr. 716. DOI 10.3389/fmicb.2020.00716.

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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.

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