Colleen B. Bove, Katharine Greene, Sharla Sugierski, Nicola G. Kriefall, Alexa K. Huzar, Annabel M. Hughes, Koty Sharp, Nicole D. Fogarty, Sarah W. Davies
Global change is increasing seawater temperatures and decreasing oceanic pH, driving declines of coral reefs globally. Coral ecosystems are also impacted by local stressors, including microplastics, which are ubiquitous on reefs. While the independent effects of these global and local stressors are well-documented, their interactions remain less explored. Here, we examine the independent and combined effects of global change (ocean warming and acidification) and microplastics exposures on gene expression (GE) and microbial community composition in the endangered coral Acropora cervicornis. Nine genotypes were fragmented and maintained in one of four experimental treatments: 1) ambient conditions (ambient seawater, no microplastics; AMB); 2) microplastics treatment (ambient seawater, microplastics; MP); 3) global change conditions (warm and acidic conditions, no microplastics; OAW); and 4) multistressor treatment (warm and acidic conditions with microplastics; OAW+MP) for 21 days after which corals were sampled for genome-wide GE profiling and ITS and 16S metabarcoding. Overall A. cervicornis GE responses to all treatments were subtle; however, corals in the multistressor treatment exhibited the strongest GE responses, and gene ontology enrichment analyses showcased that genes associated with innate immunity were overrepresented in this treatment. 16S analyses showcased that microbiomes were dominated by the bacterial symbiont Aquarickettsia and were stable, suggesting that A. cervicornis exhibited remarkably low variability in community composition, and future work should focus on functional differences across these bacterial communities as well as the influence of viruses in these responses. Overall, results suggest that local stressors present a unique challenge to endangered coral species under global change.
Citation: Update when published
Repository DOI: Will update this on publication
- R script with all code and analyses of gene expression analyses (Acer_Microplastics_Master.R)
- Figures All figures generated in this script
- GO_figures All GO trees generated from this script
- SNP_2022 SNP analyses to identify clones
- All other data files, scripts, and ouputs used throughout these analyses can be found by name in the main repository directory
NOTE: The 16S and ITS2 analyses in this manuscript were conducted by Colleen B. Bove and can be found hosted on her GitHub seabove7/acer_microplastics.