International Research Fellowship Program: Environmental Controls on an Invertebrate-Microbe Association: Tropical Corals and Their Symbiotic Bacteria

Hayes Marshall L, Silver Spring MD

Investigators

Abstract

0202688 Hayes The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Marshall L. Hayes to work with Dr. Christine Ferrier-Pages at Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Observatoire Oceanologique European in Monaco. The goal of this project is to understand how environmental conditions control an animal-bacteria symbiosis, using an experimental model based on the stony coral Stylophora pistillata and the bacterial community that lives on the coral tissue surface. Two questions will be answered: first, whether environmental changes in temperature and nutrient chemistry regulate bacterial community composition and abundance; and second, whether environmental changes influence the bacterial community by causing the host animal to alter its biochemistry. The first objective will be to employ molecular and non-molecular methods to identify bacteria collected from the surface of S. pistillata with the result being a database of long-term bacterial cultures and of bacterial DNA information. The second objective will describe the carbohydrate composition of mucus on the surface of S. pistillata under different temperature and nutrient regimes. This project will broaden understanding of animal-bacteria interactions, providing insights into how symbioses respond to large-scale environmental change in general. Dr. Ferrier-Pages and her research team specialize in the fields of microbial ecology, coral nutrition and coral-microbe interactions. The OOE is situated within the Musee Oceanographique de Monaco, a museum and aquarium that has the ability to cultivate corals for lengthy experimentation.