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.

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text

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

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text

Impacts of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) on Coral Community Structure at an Inshore Patch Reef of the Upper Florida Keys Using Photomosaics

Frontiers in Marine Science ◽

10.3389/fmars.2021.682163 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Graham Kolodziej ◽

Michael S. Studivan ◽

Arthur C. R. Gleason ◽

Chris Langdon ◽

Ian C. Enochs ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Coral Reef ◽

Coral Cover ◽

Florida Keys ◽

Coral Community ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Coral Mortality ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Reef Tract

Since the appearance of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) on reefs off Miami in 2014, this unprecedented outbreak has spread across the entirety of Florida’s coral reef tract, as well as to many territories throughout the Caribbean. The endemic zone reached the upper Florida Keys by 2016, resulting in partial or complete mortality of coral colonies across numerous species. Disease was first observed at Cheeca Rocks (Islamorada, Florida) in the beginning of 2018, with reports of coral mortality peaking mid-year. The disease was still present at Cheeca Rocks as of March 2020, however, to a lesser degree compared to the initial outbreak. Annual monitoring efforts have been ongoing at Cheeca Rocks since 2012, including repeated benthic photomosaics of a 330 m2 survey zone, spanning six replicate sites. As such, a repository of coral community composition data exists for before and after the disease outbreak that was analyzed to assess the impacts of SCTLD on reef communities at an upper Florida Keys inshore reef. Cheeca Rocks is hypothesized to be a resilient reef due to its persistent high coral cover despite its inshore location, which subjects corals to fluctuating water quality and marginal environmental conditions. Coral populations here have been shown to recover from bleaching events and heat stress with minimal coral mortality. Though colonies of coral species characterized as highly and moderately susceptible to SCTLD (e.g., Colpophyllia natans, Diploria labyrinthiformis, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Orbicella annularis, and O. faveolata) suffered mortality as a result of the outbreak with an average loss of 16.42% relative cover by species, the overall impacts on coral cover and community structure were relatively low, contributing to a loss of total coral cover of only 1.65%. Comparison of photomosaic data to other studies indicate Cheeca Rocks may not have been affected as severely as other sites on Florida’s coral reef tract, underlying this site’s potential role in coral resilience to stressors including bleaching events, land-based pollution, and disease epizootics.

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text

A rapid spread of the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease outbreak in the Mexican Caribbean

10.7287/peerj.preprints.27893v1 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip ◽

Nuria Estrada-Saldívar ◽

Esmeralda Pérez-Cervantes ◽

Ana Molina-Hernández ◽

Francisco J. Gonzalez-Barrios

Keyword(s):

Coral Disease ◽

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 (SCTLD), has impacted many 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, 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 (~450 km) 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.

Download Full-text

Peer Review #1 of "A rapid spread of the stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak in the Mexican Caribbean (v0.1)"

10.7287/peerj.8069v0.1/reviews/1 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Disease Outbreak ◽

Tissue Loss ◽

Coral Tissue ◽

Stony Coral ◽

Mexican Caribbean ◽

Rapid Spread

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text