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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.01870-07
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Microbes enriched in seawater after the addition of coral mucus

Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany; Coral Reef Ecology Working Group, GeoBio-Center, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany; Limnological Station Kilchberg, University of Zurich, Switzerland

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: Pernthaler{at}limnol.uzh.ch.

	Abstract

We investigated which microbial taxa in coastal Red Sea water were stimulated by addition of mucus from the coral Fungia sp.. A decrease in the concentration and C:N ratio of particulate organic material during short-term incubations (50h) was paralleled by a steep rise of Gammaproteobacteria, in particular of Alteromonadaceae followed by Vibrionaceae. Two almost identical genotypes affiliated with A. macleodii represented up to >85% of all Alteromonadaceae (45% of total cells) in the mucus-amended enrichments, but were rare in unamended control incubations and in ambient seawater. A. macleodii-like bacteria might thus be important in the transfer of organic carbon from coral mucus to the pelagic microbial food webs of coral reefs.