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About the Authors:
Christina A. Kellogg
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, St. Petersburg, Florida, United States of America
Yvette M. Piceno
Affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America
Lauren M. Tom
Affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America
Todd Z. DeSantis
Affiliation: Second Genome, Inc., San Bruno, California, United States of America
Michael A. Gray
Affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, St. Petersburg, Florida, United States of America
Gary L. Andersen
Affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America
Introduction
Diseases of reef-building corals are now considered a major cause of global coral reef ecosystem decline [1], [2]. The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of reports of coral diseases, particularly in the Caribbean [3]–[5]. Most of these diseases are known or suspected to be microbial in origin [6]. Moreover, microbiology is a key part of coral biology, in the same way that human microbiome studies are revealing microbes to be a critical part of human biology [7].
Siderastera siderea, also known as the massive starlet coral, is a common component of Caribbean reefs, occurring from the Gulf of Mexico to South America [8]. However, there has been little attention focused on the bacterial communities associated with this coral, other than one culture-based study [9], two clone library studies focused specifically on black band lesions [10], [11] and a recent pyrosequencing study of a white plague-like disease [12].
Dark spot syndrome (DSS) was first reported as a discoloration observed on S. siderea, Stephanocoenia intercepta, Porites astreoides, and Montastraea cavernosa near Columbia in the early 1990's [13]. Dark spot lesions are described as purple, black, or brown discolored areas of tissue that may be circular, elongate, ring-shaped, or occur lining the coral tissue-algal boundary of an older lesion [14]–[17] (Fig. S1). There is some argument in the literature as to whether to define dark spot as a disease (DSD) or a syndrome (DSS) [18]. This tissue discoloration has been linked to both physical [14] and microbiological [19], [20] causes, leading some to suggest it may be a non-specific stress response [14],...