Abstract
The world’s coral reef ecosystems are built by a symbiotic relationship between reef corals and the dinoflagellates of the family Symbiodiniaceae. Climate change has already impacted the world’s coral reef ecosystems. Some corals can survive in extreme environmental conditions through the acquisition of stress-tolerant endosymbionts. In the present study, the genetic diversity of endosymbionts of fourteen coral genera such as Porites (Five), Favia (Two), and Acropora (Seven) sampled from the reefs of Mandapam and Rameswaram, Palk Bay, Tamil Nadu, India was assessed by sequencing both large (LSU) and small subunit (SSU) gene fragments. The phylogenetic construction of LSU revealed the diversity of thermo tolerant Clade D that was monophyletic throughout various coral taxa. Comparison of thermo tolerant clade D with SST (> 32 °C) has provided valid evidence for the presence of the endosymbiont Durusdinium sp. (Clade D) across different coral species in the Palk Bay.
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All the data generated during the study were mentioned in the manuscript.
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Acknowledgements
This research was made possible because of funding support of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India (No.BT/PR6134/BCE/8/914/2012). We thank the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, New Delhi, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, and the Chief Wildlife Warden, Chennai (No. WL(A)/33128/2016) for providing permission to carry out the research work and coral collection from the Palk Bay Coast, India. We also thank to Dr. R. Rajkumar, Scientist ‘E’/Officer-in-charge, Marine Biology Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, Chennai, India for his support. S. Prakash thanks Dr. T. Sasipraba, Vice Chancellor and the Management of Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai for providing the necessary facilities for bioinformatics analysis. The authors are thankful to Dr. U. Ramesh, Assistant Professor and N. Vidhyalakshmi, UGC-BSR fellow, School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India for their help during this study. The authors thank P.M. Vatsala for correcting the English language of the manuscript. Lastly, the authors thank the anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for constructive comments which greatly improved the final version of the manuscript.
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Murugesan Rajesh Kannan: methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing-review and editing; Ramkumar Balakrishnan: methodology, formal analysis, investigation; Muneeswaran Thillaichidambaram: methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, writing-review and editing; Sivakumar Natesan: software, validation, formal analysis, writing-review and editing; Gunsekaran Paramasamy: Conceptualization, writing-review and editing, visualization, project administration, funding acquisition; Sanjeevi Prakash: software, validation, formal analysis, data curation, writing-review and editing; Chockalinagam Muthiah Ramakritinan: Conceptualization, methodology, validation, investigation, resources, data curation, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing, visualization, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.
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For the collection of coral tissue samples from Palk Bay necessary permission have been obtained from the Tamil Nadu Forest Department and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), New Delhi and Chief Wildlife Warden, Ramanathapuram via file No. WL(A)/33128/2016 prior to the study.
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11756_2022_1235_MOESM1_ESM.jpg
Supplementary file1 (JPG 255 KB) Figure S1 Phylogenetic tree (ML) constructed based on the 18S small subunit (SSU) gene fragments indicates clade D Durusdinium separated from other Symbiodinium group. Numbers above and below the lines represent bootstrap values from Maximum Likelihood Analysis
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Kannan, M.R., Balakrishnan, R., Thillaichidambaram, M. et al. Probing the thermo tolerant endosymbiont genus Durusdinium (Clade D) in the scleractinian corals of Palk Bay, Southeast coast of India. Biologia 78, 255–264 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-022-01235-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-022-01235-z