Microbial community shifts associated with the ongoing stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak on the Florida Reef Tract

ABSTRACTAs many as 22 of the 45 coral species on the Florida Reef Tract are currently affected by stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). The ongoing disease outbreak was first observed in 2014 in Southeast Florida near Miami and as of early 2019 has been documented from the northernmost reaches of the reef tract in Martin County down to Key West. We examined the microbiota associated with disease lesions and apparently healthy tissue on diseased colonies of Montastraea cavernosa, Orbicella faveolata, Diploria labyrinthiformis, and Dichocoenia stokesii. Analysis of differentially abundant taxa between disease lesions and apparently healthy tissue identified five unique amplicon sequence variants enriched in the diseased tissue in three of the coral species, namely an unclassified genus of Flavobacteriales and sequences identified as Fusibacter (Clostridiales), Planktotalea (Rhodobacterales), Algicola (Alteromonadales), and Vibrio (Vibrionales). In addition, several groups of likely opportunistic or saprophytic colonizers such as Epsilonbacteraeota, Patescibacteria, Clostridiales, Bacteroidetes, and Rhodobacterales were also enriched in SCTLD disease lesions. This work represents the first microbiological characterization of SCTLD, as an initial step toward identifying the potential pathogen(s) responsible for SCTLD.

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Microbial Community Shifts Associated With the Ongoing Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Outbreak on the Florida Reef Tract

Frontiers in Microbiology ◽

10.3389/fmicb.2019.02244 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Julie L. Meyer ◽

Jessy Castellanos-Gell ◽

Greta S. Aeby ◽

Claudia C. Häse ◽

Blake Ushijima ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Microbial Community ◽

Disease Outbreak ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Florida Reef Tract ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Reef Tract ◽

Community Shifts

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Composition of Microbial Communities in Waters Around the Florida Reef Tract and Their Potential Significance for Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease

10.20944/preprints202104.0449.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Peeter Laas ◽

Kelly Ugarelli ◽

Breege Boyer ◽

Michael J. Absten ◽

Henry O. Briceño ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Abiotic Factors ◽

Florida Keys ◽

Fish Parasites ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Shellfish Poisoning ◽

Florida Reef Tract ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Reef Tract

The Florida Keys, a delicate archipelago of sub-tropical islands extending from the south-eastern tip of Florida, host the vast majority of the only coral barrier reef in the continental United States. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD), which was first detected near Virginia Key in 2014, has spread throughout the Florida Reef Tract and to reefs throughout the Caribbean, af-fecting nearly all reef-building corals. Molecular studies of SCTLD have identified opportunistic pathogens associated with the disease, but so far no single pathogen can be clearly pinpointed as its cause. One focus of recent research has been the surrounding environment of the corals, coined the 'coral ecosphere'. Abiotic and microbial components of the coral ecosphere are pivot-al for understanding the health of a reef, and could play an important role in SCTLD in Florida. In this study, we analyzed microbial community structure and abiotic factors that can impact coral (and human) health. Both, bacterial and eukaryotic community structure were significantly linked with variations in temperature, dissolved oxygen and total organic carbon values. High abundances of copiotrophic bacteria as well as several potentially harmful microbes, including coral pathogens, fish parasites, and taxa that have been previously associated with Red Tide and shellfish poisoning, were present in our datasets and can have a pivotal impact on coral health in this ecosystem.

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Effectiveness of topical antibiotics in treating corals affected by Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.9289 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. e9289 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Karen L. Neely ◽

Kevin A. Macaulay ◽

Emily K. Hower ◽

Michelle A. Dobler

Keyword(s):

Coral Species ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Success Rates ◽

Hard Coral ◽

Topical Antibiotic ◽

Topical Antibiotics ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Orbicella Faveolata ◽

Reef Tract

Since 2014, Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) has led to mass mortality of the majority of hard coral species on the Florida Reef Tract. Following the successful treatment of SCTLD lesions on laboratory corals using water dosed with antibiotics, two topical pastes were developed as vehicles to directly apply antibiotic treatments to wild corals. These pastes were tested as placebos and with additions of amoxicillin on active SCTLD lesions on multiple coral species. The effectiveness of the pastes without antibiotics (placebo treatments) was 4% and 9%, no different from untreated controls. Adding amoxicillin to both pastes significantly increased effectiveness to 70% and 84%. Effectiveness with this method was seen across five different coral species, with success rates of the more effective paste ranging from 67% (Colpophyllia natans) to 90% (Orbicella faveolata and Montastraea cavernosa). Topical antibiotic application is a viable and effective tool for halting disease lesions on corals affected by SCTLD.

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Metabolomics of Healthy and Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Affected Montastraea cavernosa Corals

Frontiers in Marine Science ◽

10.3389/fmars.2021.714778 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Jessica M. Deutsch ◽

Olakunle A. Jaiyesimi ◽

Kelly A. Pitts ◽

Jay Houk ◽

Blake Ushijima ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Coral Species ◽

Principal Component ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Metabolic Markers ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Differential Outcomes ◽

Betaine Lipids ◽

Montastraea Cavernosa ◽

Apparently Healthy

Stony coral tissue loss disease, first observed in Florida in 2014, has now spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract and on reefs in many Caribbean countries. The disease affects a variety of coral species with differential outcomes, and in many instances results in whole-colony mortality. We employed untargeted metabolomic profiling of Montastraea cavernosa corals affected by stony coral tissue loss disease to identify metabolic markers of disease. Herein, extracts from apparently healthy, diseased, and recovered Montastraea cavernosa collected at a reef site near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida were subjected to liquid-chromatography mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Unsupervised principal component analysis reveals wide variation in metabolomic profiles of healthy corals of the same species, which differ from diseased corals. Using a combination of supervised and unsupervised data analyses tools, we describe metabolite features that explain variation between the apparently healthy corals, between diseased corals, and between the healthy and the diseased corals. By employing a culture-based approach, we assign sources of a subset of these molecules to the endosymbiotic dinoflagellates, Symbiodiniaceae. Specifically, we identify various endosymbiont- specific lipid classes, such as betaine lipids, glycolipids, and tocopherols, which differentiate samples taken from apparently healthy corals and diseased corals. Given the variation observed in metabolite fingerprints of corals, our data suggests that metabolomics is a viable approach to link metabolite profiles of different coral species with their susceptibility and resilience to numerous coral diseases spreading through reefs worldwide.

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Rapid Population Decline of the Pillar Coral Dendrogyra cylindrus Along the Florida Reef Tract

10.1101/2020.05.09.085886 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Karen L. Neely ◽

Cynthia L. Lewis

Keyword(s):

Population Decline ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Florida Reef Tract ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Chronic Stressors ◽

The Status ◽

Reef Tract ◽

Functional Extinction ◽

Dendrogyra Cylindrus

AbstractCoral reefs worldwide are in a state of decline, but the status of populations and stressors for rare species are generally not well documented using broad-scale monitoring protocol. We fate-tracked all known colonies of the pillar coral Dendrogyra cylindrus on the Florida Reef Tract from 2013 – 2020 to assess the population and document the impacts of chronic and acute stressors. Large average colony size, an absence of juveniles, and large geographic distances between genotypes suggest that the Florida D. cylindrus population has been reproductively extinct for decades. During the study period, low-intensity chronic stressors were balanced by regrowth, while back-to-back years of coral bleaching and thermally-exacerbated disease led to declines that the subsequent years of recovery suggest would take 11 uninterrupted years to overcome. The most recent stressor on Florida’s D. cylindrus population is “stony coral tissue loss disease.” Following the appearance of the disease in Florida in 2015, it resulted in unrecoverable losses to the D. cylindrus population as tissue, colonies, and whole genotypes were driven to extinction. Losses of 91% of coral tissue, 88% of colonies, and 73% of genotypes between 2014 and early 2020 have led to functional extinction of D. cylindrus on the Florida Reef Tract.

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A rapid spread of the stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak in the Mexican Caribbean

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.8069 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. e8069 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip ◽

Nuria Estrada-Saldívar ◽

Esmeralda Pérez-Cervantes ◽

Ana Molina-Hernández ◽

Francisco J. González-Barrios

Keyword(s):

Coral Species ◽

Disease Outbreak ◽

Disease Prevalence ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Similar Species ◽

Western Atlantic ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Mexican Caribbean ◽

Coral Communities

Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014, a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease, has impacted many reef-coral species in Florida. During the summer of 2018, we noticed an anomalously high disease prevalence affecting different coral species in the northern portion of the Mexican Caribbean. We assessed the severity of this outbreak in 2018/2019 using the AGRRA coral protocol to survey 82 reef sites across the Mexican Caribbean. Then, using a subset of 14 sites, we detailed information from before the outbreak (2016/2017) to explore the consequences of the disease on the condition and composition of coral communities. Our findings show that the disease outbreak has already spread across the entire region by affecting similar species (with similar disease patterns) to those previously described for Florida. However, we observed a great variability in prevalence and tissue mortality that was not attributable to any geographical gradient. Using long-term data, we determined that there is no evidence of such high coral disease prevalence anywhere in the region before 2018, which suggests that the entire Mexican Caribbean was afflicted by the disease within a few months. The analysis of sites that contained pre-outbreak information showed that this event considerably increased coral mortality and severely changed the structure of coral communities in the region. Given the high prevalence and lethality of this disease, and the high number of susceptible species, we encourage reef researchers, managers and stakeholders across the Western Atlantic to accord it the highest priority for the near future.

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Metabolomics of healthy and stony coral tissue loss disease affected Montastraea cavernosa corals

10.1101/2021.08.18.456681 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jessica M Deutsch ◽

Olakunle Jaiyesimi ◽

Kelly Pitts ◽

Jay Houk ◽

Blake Ushijima ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Coral Species ◽

Principal Component ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Metabolic Markers ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Differential Outcomes ◽

Betaine Lipids ◽

Montastraea Cavernosa ◽

Apparently Healthy

Stony coral tissue loss disease, first observed in Florida in 2014, has now spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract and on reefs in many Caribbean countries. The disease affects a variety of coral species with differential outcomes, and in many instances results in whole-colony mortality. We employed untargeted metabolomic profiling of Montastraea cavernosa corals affected by stony coral tissue loss disease to identify metabolic markers of disease. Herein, extracts from apparently healthy, diseased, and recovered corals, Montastraea cavernosa, collected at a reef site near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida were subjected to liquid-chromatography mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Unsupervised principal component analysis reveals wide variation in metabolomic profiles of healthy corals of the same species, which differ from diseased corals. Using a combination of supervised and unsupervised data analyses tools, we describe metabolite features that explain variation between the apparently healthy corals, between diseased corals, and between the healthy and the diseased corals. By employing a culture-based approach, we assign sources of a subset of these molecules to the endosymbiotic dinoflagellates, Symbiodiniaceae. Specifically, we identify various endosymbiont- specific lipid classes, such as betaine lipids, glycolipids, and tocopherols, which differentiate samples taken from apparently healthy corals and diseased corals. Given the variation observed in metabolite fingerprints of corals, our data suggests that metabolomics is a viable approach to link metabolite profiles of different coral species with their susceptibility and resilience to numerous coral diseases spreading through reefs worldwide.

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Effectiveness of topical antibiotics in treating corals affected by Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease

10.1101/870402 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

K.L. Neely ◽

K.A. Macaulay ◽

E.K. Hower ◽

M.A. Dobler

Keyword(s):

Coral Species ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Release Mechanism ◽

Hard Coral ◽

Topical Antibiotic ◽

Topical Antibiotics ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Reef Tract ◽

Topical Applications

AbstractSince 2014, Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) has led to mass mortality of the majority of hard coral species on the Florida Reef Tract. Following the successful treatment of SCTLD lesions on corals in closed aquaria using water dosed with antibiotics, two pastes were developed as vehicles for direct antibiotic treatments on wild corals. These pastes were tested as placebos and with additions of amoxicillin via topical applications over active SCTLD margins on multiple coral species. The effectiveness of the pastes without antibiotics (placebo treatments) was less than 10%. Adding amoxicillin to both pastes increased effectiveness. For one of the two pastes, which was silicone based with a time-release mechanism for the antibiotics, effectiveness in halting disease lesions reached 86% when amoxicillin was added. Topical antibiotic application is a viable tool for the preservation of priority corals affected by SCTLD.

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Reef-scale impacts of the stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak

Coral Reefs ◽

10.1007/s00338-020-01949-z ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 39 (4) ◽

pp. 861-866 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nuria Estrada-Saldívar ◽

Ana Molina-Hernández ◽

Esmeralda Pérez-Cervantes ◽

Francisco Medellín-Maldonado ◽

F. Javier González-Barrios ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Disease Outbreak ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Stony Coral

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Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease biomarker bacteria identified in corals and overlying waters using a rapid field-based sequencing approach

10.1101/2021.02.17.431614 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Cynthia C. Becker ◽

Marilyn Brandt ◽

Carolyn A. Miller ◽

Amy Apprill

Keyword(s):

Coral Disease ◽

The United States ◽

Virgin Islands ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Rna Sequences ◽

Disease Biomarker ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Ribosomal Rna Sequences ◽

Reef Tract

AbstractStony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) is a devastating disease. Since 2014, it has spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract, presumably via a water-borne vector, and into the greater Caribbean. It was first detected in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) in January 2019. To more quickly identify disease biomarker microbes, we developed a rapid pipeline for microbiome sequencing. Over a span of 10 days we collected, processed, and sequenced coral tissue and near-coral seawater microbiomes from diseased and apparently healthy Colpophyllia natans, Montastraea cavernosa, Meandrina meandrites and Orbicella franksi. Analysis of the resulting bacterial and archaeal 16S ribosomal RNA sequences revealed 25 biomarker amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) enriched in diseased tissue. These biomarker ASVs were additionally recovered in near-coral seawater (within 5 cm of coral surface), a potential recruitment zone for pathogens. Phylogenetic analysis of the biomarker ASVs belonging to Vibrio, Arcobacter, Rhizobiaceae, and Rhodobacteraceae revealed relatedness to other coral disease-associated bacteria and lineages novel to corals. Additionally, four ASVs (Algicola, Cohaesibacter, Thalassobius and Vibrio) were exact sequence matches to microbes previously associated with SCTLD. This work represents the first rapid coral disease sequencing effort and identifies biomarkers of SCTLD that could be targets for future SCTLD research.

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