Coral Echinoporalamellosa hosts multiple clades of symbionts in Western Alas Strait, Indonesia

Abstract

Coral symbiont diversity is one of the most important factors in coral resistance and coral reef resilience to bleaching. Many corals host only one symbiont clade, thus many of them vulnerable to climate change induced bleaching. Corals in Alas Strait have survived from several bleaching events. The present study aimed to look at genetic factors that potentially contributed to the survival of Echinoporalamellosa coral. Previously, E. lamellosawas reported to host only one clade of symbiont, either in Pacific or Indian Oceans. Here we provide new evidence on the ability of E. lamellosain hosting multiple clades of symbionts. The symbiont rDNA was extracted from small E. lamellosafragments and amplified by targeting ‘the non-coding gene region’ of ITS1-5.8S-ITS2. The clustering technique was used to determine the clade type of symbiont, by constructing the phylogenetic tree consist of the sequenced samples and downloaded sequences from GenBank NCBI as comparison. The constructed phylogenetic tree was based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) with bootstrap value 1000× to get the best result. The result shows the symbiont in E. lamellosatissue belonged to clades B and C. The combination of the two symbiont clades has never been recorded in previous studies, and it is very likely to have contributed to coral survival from bleaching events.Coral symbiont diversity is one of the most important factors in coral resistance and coral reef resilience to bleaching. Many corals host only one symbiont clade, thus many of them vulnerable to climate change induced bleaching. Corals in Alas Strait have survived from several bleaching events. The present study aimed to look at genetic factors that potentially contributed to the survival of Echinoporalamellosa coral. Previously, E. lamellosawas reported to host only one clade of symbiont, either in Pacific or Indian Oceans. Here we provide new evidence on the ability of E. lamellosain hosting multiple clades of symbionts. The symbiont rDNA was extracted from small E. lamellosafragments and amplified by targeting ‘the non-coding gene region’ of ITS1-5.8S-ITS2. The clustering technique was used to determine the clade type of symbiont, by constructing the phylogenetic tree consist of the sequenced samples and downloaded sequences from GenBank NCBI as comparison. The constructed phylogenetic tree was based ...