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Multimodal Optical Microscopy Methods Reveal Polyp Tissue Morphology and Structure in Caribbean Reef Building Corals
Published on: September 5, 2014
Compositional shifts in bacterial communities associated with the coral Palythoa caribaeorum due to anthropogenic
Gustavo Vasconcelos Bastos Paulino1, Leonardo Broetto2, Victor Satler Pylro3
1Programa de Pós-graduação em Diversidade Biológica e Conservação nos Trópicos, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Campus A. C. Simões, Av. Lourival Melo Mota, s/n, CEP 57072-900 Maceió, AL, Brazil.
Abstract:
Corals harbor abundant and diverse prokaryotic communities that may be strongly influenced by human activities, which in turn compromise the normal functioning of coral species and predispose them to opportunistic infections. In this study, we investigated the effect of sewage dumping on the bacterial communities associated with the soft coral Palythoa caribaeorum at two sites in the Brazilian coast. We observed a dominance of bacterial species classified as human pathogens at sites exposed to untreated sewage discharge. The microbial diversity of undisturbed sites was more homogeneous and diverse and showed greater abundance. In addition, bacterial communities differed substantially between the exposed and undisturbed areas. The microbial community associated with the samples collected from the exposed sites revealed the anthropogenic effect caused by organic matter from untreated sewage dumping, with an abundance of pathogenic bacterial species.
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