Bacteria associated with the rapid tissue necrosis of stony corals

The rapid tissue necrosis (RTN) is a common disease of both wild and captive stony corals, which causes a fast tissue degradation (peeling) and death of the colony. Here we report the results of an investigation carried out on the stony coral Pocillopora damicornis, affected by an RTN-like disease. Total abundance of prokaryotes in tissue samples, determined by epifluorescence microscopy, was significantly higher in diseased than in healthy corals, as well as bacterial counts on MB2216 agar plates. Further experiments performed by fluorescent in situ hybridization using a 16S rDNA Vibrio-specific probe showed that vibrios were significantly more abundant in diseased than in healthy corals. Accordingly, bacterial counts on TCBS agar plates were higher in diseased than in healthy tissues. 16S rDNA sequencing identified as Vibrio colonies from diseased tissues only. Cultivated vibrios were dominated by a single ribotype, which displayed 99% of similarity with Vibrio harveyi strain LB4. Bacterial ribotype richness, assessed by terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the 16S rDNA, was significantly higher in diseased than in healthy corals. Using an in silico software, we estimated that a single terminal restriction fragment, putatively assigned to a Vibrio sp., accounted for > 15% and < 5% of the total bacterial assemblage, in diseased and healthy corals respectively. These results let us hypothesize that the RTN in stony corals can be an infectious disease associated to the presence of Vibrio harveyi. However, further studies are needed to validate the microbial origin of this pathology.