Endosymbiont diversity and community structure in Porites lutea from Southeast Asia are driven by a suite of environment
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Endosymbiont diversity and community structure in Porites lutea from Southeast Asia are driven by a suite of environmental variables Yuen Ting Rachel Tan 1,2 & Benjamin J. Wainwright 1,2 & Lutfi Afiq-Rosli 1,3 & Yin Cheong Aden Ip 1 & Jen Nie Lee 4 & Nhung Thi Hong Nguyen 1 & Stephen B. Pointing 1,2 & Danwei Huang 1,3 Received: 1 December 2019 / Accepted: 11 March 2020 / Published online: 6 April 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Many corals depend upon the highly specialised and intricate relationship they form with Symbiodiniaceae algal symbionts. Porites lutea is a massive reef-building coral found throughout Southeast Asia that hosts these endosymbionts obligately. Yet despite the prevalence and importance of P. lutea as one of the most dominant corals here, its associated Symbiodiniaceae communities have not been precisely characterised. In this study, we used high-throughput DNA amplicon sequencing of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) to characterise the diversity, community structure and biogeographic distribution of Symbiodiniaceae in P. lutea throughout Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia. Consistent with previous studies, we found that Cladocopium was the most dominant genus among all samples, and Cladocopium C15 was the most dominant type (or subclade) with 100% occurrence in all samples from every study site. Results also revealed numerous Symbiodiniaceae types associated with P. lutea that were previously undetected in Southeast Asia. Endosymbiont diversity and community variation are driven by a combination of site-specific mean monthly cloud cover and variance in monthly sea surface temperature. This study contributes baseline data toward understanding differences in Symbiodiniaceae assemblages hosted by P. lutea, shedding light on how they might be indicative of particular environmental conditions and coral responses. Keywords Algal-coral symbiosis . Biodiversity . Coral reef . ITS2 . Peninsular Malaysia . Scleractinia . Singapore . Zooxanthellae
1 Introduction Southeast Asian marine ecosystems are some of the most biologically diverse on the planet (Burke et al. 2002), with 255 coral species recorded in Singapore and over 400 species known from Peninsular Malaysia (Huang et al. 2009; Affendi and Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13199-020-00671-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Benjamin J. Wainwright [email protected] 1
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 16 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117558, Singapore
2
Yale-NUS College, National University of Singapore, 16 College Avenue West, Singapore 138527, Singapore
3
Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore, 18 Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119227, Singapore
4
Faculty of Science and Marine Environment, University of Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Malaysia
Rosman 2011; Huang et al. 2015). The coral reefs of Singapore and Malaysia yield tangible benefits th
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