Microbial communities associated with the invasive Hawaiian sponge Mycale armata

Microbial symbionts are fundamentally important to their host ecology, but microbial communities of invasive marine species remain largely unexplored. Clone libraries and Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analyses revealed diverse microbial phylotypes in the invasive marine sponge Mycale armata. Phylotypes were related to eight phyla: Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi, Crenarchaeota and Firmicutes, with predominant alphaproteobacterial sequences (>58%). Three Bacterial Phylotype Groups (BPG1--associated only with sequence from marine sponges; BPG2--associated with sponges and other marine organisms and BPG3--potential new phylotypes) were identified in M. armata. The operational taxonomic units (OTU) of cluster BPG2-B, belonging to Rhodobacteraceae, are dominant sequences of two clone libraries of M. armata, but constitute only a small fraction of sequences from the non-invasive sponge Dysidea sp. Six OTUs from M. armata were potential new phylotypes because of their low sequence identity with their reference sequences. Our results suggest that M. armata harbors both sponge-specific phylotypes and bacterial phylotypes from other marine organisms.