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Reconstructing the dynamics of past coral endosymbiotic algae communities using coral ancient DNA (coraDNA)
Most scleractinian corals are under threat from global warming, yet some exhibit remarkable resistance to heat stress. Coral thermal tolerance depends on both the intrinsic properties of the cnidarian host and the physiology of their symbiotic algae (Symbiodiniaceae). Some corals adapt to heat stress by altering their Symbiodiniaceae communities, but these shifts are primarily observed over very short evolutionary timescales, leaving a gap in our understanding of coral holobiont evolution over longer periods. In this study, we combined ancient DNA analysis from a coral core with a metabarcoding approach to reconstruct past Symbiodiniaceae communities associated with a living colony of Porites lobata from New Caledonia over the last century. Using the SymPortal analytical pipeline, we identified 53 ‘defining intragenomic variants’ (DIVs) related to Symbiodiniaceae. The number of Symbiodiniaceae DIVs per sample ranged from 5 to 22 and showed no correlation with the age of the coraDNA sample or the total number of sequences obtained. Our results reveal a generally stable Symbiodiniaceae community associated with P. lobata, dominated by the C15 clade, though substantial shifts in community composition coincided with an extreme warm winter event. Additionally, we detected the presence of Azadinium spinosum (Dinophyceae) in two coraDNA replicates from the same position in the coral core, and sequences of the host P. lobata in a subset of samples. This study lays the groundwork for future research into the evolutionary dynamics of coral holobionts at the colony level across extensive temporal scales.
Keyword(s)
Coral, Symbiodiniaceae, Ancient DNA, Metabarcoding, ITS2
Full Text
File | Pages | Size | Access | |
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Publisher's official version IN PRESS | 11 | 2 Mo | ||
Supplementary file1 (Figure SF1: Histogram of amplicon size obtained from each sample library before and after the FROGs filtering processes.) | 1 | 38 Ko | ||
Supplementary file2 (Figure SF2: Pictures of the three coral core sections under the CT-Scan revealing the successive growth bands. Core sections are presented from up to down (youngest section to... | - | 57 Ko | ||
Supplementary file3 (Figure SF3: Rarefaction curves (in terms of OTUs) obtained for each of the 19 coraDNA samples) | 1 | 120 Ko | ||
Supplementary file4 (Figure SF4: ITS-profile of each coraDNA sample based on the SymPortal analytical pipeline.) | - | 2 Mo | ||
Supplementary file5 (Table S1: Raw number of sequences obtained from the metabarcoding sequencing, and the number of sequences conserved at each processing step of the FROGs pipeline over all ... | - | 18 Ko | ||
Supplementary file6 (Table S2: Affiliation of each OTU identified in this study based on a megablast using the NCBI non-redundant nucleotide (core-nt) database.) | - | 14 Ko | ||
Preprint - 10.1101/2024.03.21.584420 | 25 | 2 Mo |