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Ectyoplasia ferox, an Experimentally Tractable Model for Vertical Microbial Transmission in Marine Sponges

  • Invertebrate Microbiology
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Abstract

The oviparous sponge Ectyoplasia ferox is commonly found in Florida and the Bahamas. Every year in August and/or September about 6 days after a full moon, E. ferox will shed embryo-containing spawning material into the seawater from which hundreds to thousands of larvae will hatch per host individual. In order to investigate vertical microbial transmission in E. ferox, 16S rRNA gene library construction and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was employed. Microbial symbionts from six phyla and the unknown lineage SAUL were shown to be vertically transmitted. The identification of 21 VT clusters, of which 19 were situated within sponge-specific or sponge-coral-specific clusters, indicated that a large fraction of the symbiotic microbial consortium was present in the sexual reproductive stages. Spawning led to a 50 % reduction of microbial numbers in the adult sponge mesohyl. We furthermore provide the first evidence that the symbiotic microbial consortia of E. ferox were generally metabolically active within the reproductive stages. Finally, we propose E. ferox as a model system for vertical transmission owing to the ease of experimental access to all sexual reproductive stages, and to experimental tractability in the laboratory including the possibility of rearing symbiont-free juvenile sponges.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the marine operations personnel of the National Undersea Research Center (NURC) of UNC Wilmington (Key Largo, FL), Hilde Angermeier (University of Würzburg) for excellent support during field work, and Alexander Ereskovsky (CNRS, Marseille, France) for valuable help in interpretation of the microscopic images. Research was supported by German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgmeinschaft) grant HE3299/1–3 to UH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Julius-von-Sachs Institute for Biological Sciences, University of Wuerzburg, Julius-von-Sachs Platz 3, 97082, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Volker Gloeckner & Ute Hentschel

  2. Institute of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 3431 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC, 28557, USA

    Niels Lindquist

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Paleontology and Geobiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Richard-Wagner-Str. 10, 80333, Munich, Germany

    Susanne Schmitt

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  1. Volker Gloeckner
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  2. Niels Lindquist
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  4. Ute Hentschel
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Correspondence to Susanne Schmitt or Ute Hentschel.

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Supplementary Fig. 1

16S rRNA gene sequence-based maximum likelihood tree of Alpha- and Deltaproteobacteria (Supplementary Fig. 1a) and Gammaproteobacteria (Supplementary Fig. 1b). For details, see legend to Fig. 7. (PPTX 147 kb)

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Gloeckner, V., Lindquist, N., Schmitt, S. et al. Ectyoplasia ferox, an Experimentally Tractable Model for Vertical Microbial Transmission in Marine Sponges. Microb Ecol 65, 462–474 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-012-0142-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-012-0142-7

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