Comparison of Endosymbiotic and Free-Living Symbiodinium (Dinophyceae) Diversity a Hawaiian Reef Environment. J Phycol
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Date
2010
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Abstract
Many scleractinian corals must acquire their endosymbiotic
dinoflagellates (genus Symbiodinium) anew
each generation from environmental pools, and
exchange between endosymbiotic and environmental
pools of Symbiodinium (reef waters and sediments)
has been proposed as a mechanism for optimizing
coral physiology in the face of environmental
change. Our understanding of the diversity of Symbiodinium
spp. in environmental pools is poor by comparison
to that engaged in endosymbiosis, which
reflects the challenges of visualizing the genus
against the backdrop of the complex and diverse
micro-eukaryotic communities found free-living in
the environment. Here, the molecular diversity of
Symbiodinium living in the waters and sediments of a
reef near Coconut Island, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, sampled
at four hourly intervals over a period of 5 d was
characterized using a Symbiodinium-specific hypervariable
region of the chloroplast 23S. A comparison
of Symbiodinium spp. diversity recovered from environmental
samples with the endosymbiotic diversity
in coral species that dominate the adjacent reef
revealed limited overlap between these communities.
These data suggest that the potential for infection,
exchange, and ⁄ or repopulation of corals with
Symbiodinium derived from the environment is limited
at this location, a finding that is perhaps consistent
with the high proportion of coral species in this
geographic region that transmit endosymbionts from
generation to generation.
Description
Keywords
Coral, Cp23S, Dinoflagellate, ITS-2, Symbiodinium
Citation
Pochon, X., Stat, M., Takabayashi, M., Chasqui, L., Chauka, L.J., Logan, D.D. and Gates, R.D., 2010. COMPARISON OF ENDOSYMBIOTIC AND FREE‐LIVING SYMBIODINIUM (DINOPHYCEAE) DIVERSITY IN A HAWAIIAN REEF ENVIRONMENT1. Journal of Phycology, 46(1), pp.53-65.