Seasonal changes in microbial communities associated with the jewel anemone Corynactis viridis

Here we explore the bacterial community structure, and its changes across different seasons, associated with the jewel anemone Corynactis viridis, an anthozoan Cnidaria that is widely distributed in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Samples were collected in the North Adriatic Sea in three seasons and the community composition was studied using 16S rDNA sequencing. We show that C. viridis-associated microbial communities are unique and significantly different from those in the surrounding seawater. Interestingly, we observe remarkable changes in the C. viridis microbiome according to seasonality. In particular, the C. viridis microbiome is capable of rearranging its overall ecological structure with the winter-summer transition, moving from an oligotrophic anaerobic community to a heterotrophic ecosystem, with the propensity to ferment proteins and complex polysaccharides. Our findings demonstrate that C. viridis has a unique associated microbiota and suggest that this is capable of adapting to seasonal changes in the host physiology, by establishing a microbiome-host interaction process whose relevance to C. viridis has yet to be determined. This work was carried out in the context of the Controlling Microbiomes Circulations for Better Food Systems (CIRCLES) project, which was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 818290.

Identifier
Source https://data.blue-cloud.org/search-details?step=~0124E56CB261536B6E5276417169136301484DFD61E
Metadata Access https://data.blue-cloud.org/api/collections/4E56CB261536B6E5276417169136301484DFD61E
Provenance
Instrument 532; 308
Publisher Blue-Cloud Data Discovery & Access service; ELIXIR-ENA
Publication Year 2026
OpenAccess true
Contact blue-cloud-support(at)maris.nl
Representation
Discipline Marine Science
Spatial Coverage (12.580W, 44.380S, 12.580E, 44.380N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2018-12-21T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2019-07-20T00:00:00Z