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Core Community Persistence Despite Dynamic Spatiotemporal Responses in the Associated Bacterial Communities of Farmed Pacific Oysters

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

A breakdown in host-bacteria relationships has been associated with the progression of a number of marine diseases and subsequent mortality events. For the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, summer mortality syndrome (SMS) is one of the biggest constraints to the growth of the sector and is set to expand into temperate systems as ocean temperatures rise. Currently, a lack of understanding of natural spatiotemporal dynamics of the host-bacteria relationship limits our ability to develop microbially based monitoring approaches. Here, we characterised the associated bacterial community of C. gigas, at two Irish oyster farms, unaffected by SMS, over the course of a year. We found C. gigas harboured spatiotemporally variable bacterial communities that were distinct from bacterioplankton in surrounding seawater. Whilst the majority of bacteria-oyster associations were transient and highly variable, we observed clear patterns of stability in the form of a small core consisting of six persistent amplicon sequence variants (ASVs). This core made up a disproportionately large contribution to sample abundance (34 ± 0.14%), despite representing only 0.034% of species richness across the study, and has been associated with healthy oysters in other systems. Overall, our study demonstrates the consistent features of oyster bacterial communities across spatial and temporal scales and provides an ecologically meaningful baseline to track environmental change.

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Data availability

Sequences are accessible through the EMBL database (accession no. PRJEB52444). ASV table and metadata are available at https://figshare.com/s/b36ed8e1872f496d437a.

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Acknowledgements

We thank oyster farmers at Bannow Bay and Cromane for their continued support and facilitation of this research.

Funding

This research was funded by the European Regional Development fund through the Interreg Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme project BLUEFISH and the EU’s West Wales and the Valleys project SHELLFISH CENTRE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, The Laboratory, Plymouth, PL1 2PB, UK

    Nathan G. King & Dan A. Smale

  2. Centre of Applied Marine Sciences, School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Menai Bridge, LL59 5AB, UK

    Nathan G. King, Jamie M. Thorpe & Shelagh K. Malham

  3. Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DA, UK

    Niall J. McKeown

  4. Bord Iascaigh Mhara, Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, Ireland

    Adam J. Andrews & Ronan Browne

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  1. Nathan G. King
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Contributions

NGK and SKM conceived the designed the study. JT conducted all laboratory work. RB and AA conducted all fieldwork. NGK lead the manuscript preparation, and all authors contributed equally to subsequent edits. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nathan G. King.

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King, N.G., Smale, D.A., Thorpe, J.M. et al. Core Community Persistence Despite Dynamic Spatiotemporal Responses in the Associated Bacterial Communities of Farmed Pacific Oysters. Microb Ecol 86, 154–162 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02083-9

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