Abstract
Understanding how corals and their symbionts specialize across depth gradients allows us to understand biodiversity in shallow and mesophotic coral ecosystems. Here we determined the prevalence of endolithic algal in Agaricia undata (17–83 m) and examined community changes within (shallow, upper and lower zones) and among sites (oceanic vs. continental siliciclastic influence). We observed exposed filaments of endolithic algae in some colonies, which in some cases surfaced the coral as tubular pipelines bridging A. undata costae. We also found multiple cryptic species within the monophyletic group of Ostreobium-like algae (12 rbcL types). Rarely explored as symbionts, Ostreobium in A. undata highlights its potential role in facilitating a broader depth range.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Coffroth MA, Lasker HR, Diamond ME, Bruenn JA, Bermingham E (1992) DNA fingerprints of a gorgonian coral: a method for detecting clonal structure in a vegetative species. Mar Biol 114:317–325
Darriba D, Taboada GL, Doallo RR, Posada D (2012) jModelTest 2: more models, new heuristics and parallel computing. Nat Methods 9:772
Drummond AJ, Suchard MA, Xie D, Rambaut A (2012) Bayesian phylogenetics with BEAUti and the BEAST 1.7. Mol Biol Evol 29:1969–1973
Ellis J, Solander DC (1786) The natural history of many curious and uncommon zoophytes: collected from various parts of the globe. B. White and Peter Elmsly
Fine M, Loya Y (2002) Endolithic algae: an alternative source of photoassimilates during coral bleaching. Proc Biol Sci 269:1205–1210
Golubic S, Radtke G, Le Campion-alsumard T, Le Campion-Alsumard T (2005) Endolithic fungi in marine ecosystems. Trends Microbiol 13:229–235
Gonzalez-Zapata FL, Bongaerts P, Ramírez-Portilla C, Adu-Oppong B, Walljasper G, Reyes A, Sanchez JA (2018) Holobiont diversity in a reef-building coral over its entire depth range in the mesophotic zone. Front Mar Sci 5:29
Guindon S, Gascuel O (2003) A simple, fast, and accurate algorithm to estimate large phylogenies by maximum likelihood. Syst Biol 52:696–704
Gutner-Hoch E, Fine M (2011) Genotypic diversity and distribution of Ostreobium quekettii within scleractinian corals. Coral Reefs 30:643–650
Koehne B, Elli G, Jennings RC, Wilhelm C, Trissl HW (1999) Spectroscopic and molecular characterization of a long wavelength absorbing antenna of Ostreobium sp. Biochim Biophys Acta Bioenergy 1412:94–107
Larsson A (2014) AliView: a fast and lightweight alignment viewer and editor for large datasets. Bioinformatics 30:3276–3278
Lesser MP, Slattery M, Leichter JJ (2009) Ecology of mesophotic coral reefs. J Exp Mar Bio Ecol 375:1–8
Magnusson S, Fine M, Kühl M (2007) Light microclimate of endolithic phototrophs in the scleractinian corals Montipora monasteriata and Porites cylindrica. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 332:119–128
Pyle RL (1998) Use of advanced mixed-gas diving technology to explore the coral reef “twilight zone”. In: Ocean pulse, pp 71–88
Ralph PJ, Larkum AWD, Kühl M (2007) Photobiology of endolithic microorganisms in living coral skeletons: 1. Pigmentation, spectral reflectance and variable chlorophyll fluorescence analysis of endoliths in the massive corals Cyphastrea serailia, Porites lutea and Goniastrea australensis. Mar Biol 152:395–404
Reid NM, Carstens BC (2012) Phylogenetic estimation error can decrease the accuracy of species delimitation: a Bayesian implementation of the general mixed Yule-coalescent model. BMC Evol Biol 12:196
Ronquist F, Teslenko M, Van Der Mark P, Ayres DL, Darling A, Höhna S, Larget B, Liu L, Suchard MA, Huelsenbeck JP (2012) Mrbayes 3.2: efficient bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Syst Biol 61:539–542
Sauvage T, Schmidt WE, Suda S, Fredericq S (2016) A metabarcoding framework for facilitated survey of endolithic phototrophs with tufA. BMC Ecol 16:8
Schlichter D, Zscharnack B, Krisch H (1995) Transfer of photoassimilates from endolithic algae to coral tissue. Naturwissenschaften 82:561–564
Shashar N, Stambler N (1992) Endolithic algae within corals-life in an extreme environment. J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 163:277–286
Slattery M, Lesser MP (2012) Mesophotic coral reefs: a global model of community structure and function. In: Proceedings of 12th international coral reef symposium cairns, pp 9–13
Stamatakis A (2006) RAxML-VI-HPC: maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models. Bioinformatics 22:2688–2690
Sunagawa S, Desalvo MK, Voolstra CR, Reyes-bermudez A (2009) Identification and gene expression analysis of a taxonomically restricted cysteine-rich protein family in reef-building corals. PLoS One 4:e4865
Tamura K, Stecher G, Peterson D, Filipski A, Kumar S (2013) MEGA6: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 6.0. Mol Biol Evol 30:2725–2729
Tribollet A (2008) The boring microflora in modern coral reef ecosystems: a review of its roles. Current developments in bioerosion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 67–94
Velásquez J, Sánchez JA (2015) Octocoral species assembly and coexistence in Caribbean coral reefs. PLoS ONE 10:e0129609
Verbruggen H, Tribollet A (2011) Boring algae. Curr Biol 21:R876–R877
Zhang J, Kapli P, Pavlidis P, Stamatakis A (2013) A general species delimitation method with applications to phylogenetic placements. Bioinformatics 29:2869–2876
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by COLCIENCIAS Grant No. 120465944147, Universidad de los Andes (Vicerrectoria de Investigaciones-Programa de Investigación en Especiación Ecológica) and CORALINA (Convenios 13-2014 and 21-2015). We thank N. Bolaños, E. Castro, J. Andrade, F. García, O. Ruiz, D. Seguro, L. Dueñas, M. Forero, L. Gutierrez, M. Gómez, M. Marrugo, P. Bongaerts, C. Ramirez and A. Henao.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Topic Editor Line k Bay
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gonzalez-Zapata, F.L., Gómez-Osorio, S. & Sánchez, J.A. Conspicuous endolithic algal associations in a mesophotic reef-building coral. Coral Reefs 37, 705–709 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-018-1695-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-018-1695-9