Introduction

Corals harbour a diverse microbial community that is vital for their health and resilience1,2. The skeletons of stony corals are populated by endolithic (limestone-boring) bacteria, fungi and a conspicuous layer of green algae3,4. These organisms are protected from the external environment but endure very low levels of light and extreme daily fluctuations of pH and oxygen levels5. The endolithic habitat therefore contains a specialized microbial community and very little is known about when or how many times the association between corals and these organisms has evolved.

Endolithic algae constitute a major component of the endolithic microbiome in terms of abundance and ecological roles. They are the principal microbial agent of reef erosion6,7 and increase coral decalcification under elevated acidity and temperature8. These algae also protect corals from high-light stress9 and provide them with an alternative source of energy during bleaching events10. The balance of benefits and drawbacks that these algae convey to corals is unclear and likely depends on the interplay between different algal lineages and other microorganisms in the coral holobiont. However, these organisms are mostly uncharacterized.

Ostreobium (Ulvophyceae, Chlorophyta) is considered to be the most abundant endolithic algal genus in marine habitats and has three described species (although there are some inconsistencies in literature). It is a siphonous alga, meaning that its whole body consists of a single, branched, multinucleate cell11. This simple architecture evidently puts strong limits on the number of morphological characters available to distinguish different species12. A pilot study on the rbcL gene diversity in Ostreobium found seven genotypes, indicating that the number of species is higher than the taxonomic literature suggests13. Several other micro-eukaryotic groups in coral skeletons possibly also have uncharted cryptic diversity (e.g. fungi), demanding approaches to study their biodiversity that do not rely on morphological identification.

Metabarcoding allows for in-depth microbial composition assessments directly from environmental samples14. This approach has led to the discovery of an enormous number of microorganisms never isolated or cultured before. Those organisms–coined microbial dark matter–account for the majority of microbial diversity15,16. There is an even darker category of organismal matter though–those that are undetectable with commonly used metabarcoding methods. The fraction of the biodiversity captured by metabarcoding surveys depends on the markers and primers used, so organisms that are not amplified with the standard methods go undetected even if they are common and play important roles in the ecosystem.

Endolithic algae illustrate how common and important organisms can be virtually ignored in metabarcoding surveys that use a single standard marker. Although the coral microbiome is relatively well studied, researchers using the 16S rDNA are generally interested in the bacterial community and often discard chloroplast reads (e.g17). Eukaryotic surveys based on 18S rDNA possibly underestimate algal diversity because they can be biased towards heterotrophs18. The use of group-specific markers with higher phylogenetic resolution improves the recognition of closely related organisms (e.g. cryptic species) and allows phylogeny-based evolutionary inferences. Comprehensively surveying all microbial diveristy would require sequencing both universal and high-resolution markers. Such approaches would facilitate capturing an eclectic range of co-occurring microorganisms and simultaneously getting a deeper understaing of particular taxa of interest.

Multi-marker strategies have not been extensively used for two main reasons. First, library preparation becomes expensive for multiple markers and there are no automated protocols available to study the less commonly used markers. Second, non-standard markers have relatively poor reference datasets compared to what is available for 16S and 18S rDNAs, hence the classification of the retrieved sequences by conventional methods (e.g. RDP classifier19 or BLAST20) is problematic21. In such cases, operational taxonomic units (OTUs) are better classified using a phylogenetic framework, which has the added advantage of providing an historical evolutionary perspective.

We investigated the diversity of the prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbiome in coral skeletons using a cost-effective multi-marker metabarcoding protocol and evaluated the benefits of different markers. Because of their abundance and importance, we focused on the biodiversity and evolution of the green algae in the endolithic community. Using phylogenetic methods, we inferred when and how many times the association with a coral-endolithic habitat emerged in the evolutionary history of green algae.

Results

Cost-effective biodiversity assessment

We sequenced 132 coral skeleton samples collected in Australia and Papua New Guinea from a wide variety of habitats and coral genera (Supplementary Materials). In order to obtain information from eukaryotic and prokaryotic members of the microbiome, we used four metabarcoding markers: the 16S rDNA22, the 18S rDNA23, a fragment of the 23S rDNA that targets algal chloroplasts24 and a fragment of the elongation factor Tu (tufA) gene, a DNA barcode recommended and commonly used for green algae due to its ability to distinguish between closely related species25.

We used a cost-effective multi-marker metabarcoding approach that uses a two-step PCR protocol to amplify the markers and prepare the Illumina library, replacing a commonly used kit (Nextera Index kit) with custom made oligos, reducing the indexing costs by 60 times (AUD $3.28 vs. $0.05 per sample, Supplementary Materials). When compared to the Earth Microbiome Project protocol26, this approach has the advantage of requiring only 20 indexing oligos (Fig. 1A), plus first PCR primers, instead of 384 (plus 4 reverse primers) for 96 samples and 4 markers. Using home-made magnetic beads as described in Rohland & Reich27 decimated the costs of cleaning PCR products. We obtained, on average, 161,364 sequences per sample (comprising 4 amplicons each). Following removal of low quality sequences, 14,131,986 sequences were retained, of which 2,603,384 were in the 16S rDNA dataset, 4,102,867 in the 18S rDNA, 4,607,505 in the 23S rDNA and 2,818,230 sequences in the tufA dataset. These sequences were deposited in NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under the accession ID SRP073961.

Figure 1
figure 1

The multi-marker metabarcoding approach.

The library preparation (A) consists of a 2-step PCR amplification: the first PCR amplifies the target markers and the second PCR adds the indices and the Illumina adapters (T = tail, P = amplicon-specific primer, P5 = Illumina adapter, FI = forward index, A = amplicon). The amplicons are then purified with magnetic beads, quantified and pooled together to be sequenced in an Illumina’s MiSeq platform. The sequence reads of the 4 markers are teased apart in the analysis pipeline (B) based on primers sequences and go through a series of quality control steps (including pipelines available in QIIME28), OTU clustering (using UPARSE46), alignment and classification.

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Multi-marker microbiome characterization

To analyse the overall microbiome diversity, we made an assessment of all OTUs classified via RDP classifier as implemented in QIIME19,28. Our results showed that the widely used 16S and 18S rDNA markers drastically underestimate green algae diversity. In total, 3,680 OTUs were found in the 16S rDNA survey, 406 in the 18S rDNA, 659 in the 23S rDNA and 2,274 in the tufA dataset. Green algal reads were the most abundant in all but 18S rDNA dataset (Fig. 2). Note that the living coral tissue was removed prior to DNA isolation, therefore the high relative abundance of algal reads when compared to bacterial reflects the densely algae-populated skeletons. Besides Ostreobium, several other photosynthetic lineages were found including other green algae, red algae, brown algae and cyanobacteria, most of which are organisms or lineages not previously known to occur in coral skeletons.

Figure 2
figure 2

Pie charts indicating the relative abundance of sequence reads matching the main taxa assigned with RDP-classifier.

Note that the relative abundances do not always reflect diversity, as indicated by the total and green algal number of Operation Taxonomic Units retrieved with each marker.

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Although green algae accounted for 55.7% of the 16S sequences, only 30 out of 3,680 OTUs were assigned to this group and only 3 OTUs were classified beyond the rank of class (Ulvophyceae)–1 OTU with the closest match to Bryopsis hypnoides (confidence score = 0.6) and 2 OTUs classified as Chlorodesmis fastigiata (confidence score >0.7). Red algae and cyanobacteria composed 0.8% and 0.3% of 16S rDNA reads, respectively. The alphaproteobacterial order Rhizobiales, thought to occur exclusively within the coral tissue29, was found in considerable abundance (2.3%) among our reads (see also30), although the possibility of contamination from coral tissue cannot be entirely ruled out. Green sulphur bacteria (phylum Chlorobi) composed 0.1% of the reads in our 16S rDNA dataset.

The 18S rDNA metabarcode captured mostly endolithic sponges (42.3%), but also occasional nematodes, arthropods, annelids and fungi (Fig. 2). Sixteen OTUs (1.9% of relative abundance) were assigned to Labyrinthula (confidence score >0.7), a heterokont genus known to infect algae31. Green algae composed 8.2% of the sequence reads, comprising 25 OTUs. 7 OTUs were classified to genus rank (confidence score > 0.7): 4 Cladophora, 1 Pseudulvella and 2 Phaeophila. None of the reads corresponded to Ostreobium despite it clearly being abundant in the samples. Brown algae composed 0.5% of the reads, with 11 OTUs, mostly Ectocarpales.

In the 23S rDNA dataset, the vast majority of reads were assigned to green algae (91%—84 OTUs), red algae (4%) and bacteria (3.5%). Cyanobacteria were present in low relative abundance but were diverse. Of the 92 cyanobacterial OTUs, 5 matched Acaryochloris marina with high confidence scores (0.87–1.00).

The tufA reads were composed of green algae (51.3%), bacteria (48.4%) and a small fraction of red algae and heterokonts (Fig. 2). This marker retrieved the highest number of green algal OTUs (128) of which 53 were classified as Ostreobium. Three other algal genera were found with high confidence scores (0.85–1.00): 2 OTUs in Halimeda, 2 Phaeophila and 1 Ulvella. Other OTUs were only classified at higher taxonomic ranks or with lower confidence scores.

Phylogenetic diversity and evolution of endolithic green algae

We studied the diversity of green algae in more detail by building phylogenetic trees from the retrieved eukaryotic OTUs (as classified by RDP) and available reference sequences (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Figs S1–S4). The use of a phylogenetic framework allowed identifying more green algal OTUs than the RDP classifier did. In the 16S data, 36 OTUs were green algae (versus 30 classified with RDP), 21 of which were in the Ostreobium clade (Supplementary Fig. S2). The phylogeny of the 18S OTUs confirmed the absence of Ostreobium reads in this dataset and the presence of 5 OTUs in the Cladophora genus (Supplementary Fig. S3). The 23S rDNA dataset revealed 79 OTUs within core Chlorophyta, of which 61 were in the Ostreobium clade (Supplementary Fig. S4).

Figure 3
figure 3

Maximum Likelihood tree of green algae (4833 bp alignment) including the OTUs retrieved with the tufA metabarcode.

The green algal families where OTUs were found are indicated in square brackets. The OTUs composing the endolithic clades were given an identifier for reference in future biodiversity screenings using the tufA marker. The ancestral states reconstruction of the endolithic nature is plotted along the tree and indicate the probability of the ancestral lineage being coral-endolithic (black) or not (grey).

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The tufA gene has a better phylogenetic resolution than other markers25 and allowed us to perform a detailed analysis of phylogenetic diversity and evolution of the green algal OTUs (Fig. 3, Supplementary Fig. S1). We excluded 7 green algal tufA OTUs that did not fall within the core Chlorophyta clade. Of the 121 remaining OTUs, one belonged to the Trebouxiophyceae and 120 were Ulvophyceae. Endolithic OTUs were found in 11 families in Ulvophyceae (plus Cladophoraceae in 18S rDNA dataset), some OTUs were distantly related to known algae while others were very similar or identical to known seaweeds never reported in coral skeletons (Fig. 3, bootstrap values in Supplementary Fig. S1). With the two previously published Ostreobium tufA sequences, 82 OTUs formed a well-supported, early-branching clade that was further split into 4 subclades, also well supported. We discovered another two endolithic clades: one including Pseudochlorodesmis (4 OTUs) and a second one sister to the family Rhipiliaceae (12 OTUs). The ancestral reconstruction of the coral-endolithic nature in green algae indicated that this trait evolved more than 20 times independently (Fig. 3). The time-calibrated phylogeny also allowed comparing the age of families across different parts of the tree and extrapolating this age to the newly discovered lineages. It suggested that the endolithic algae found in this study represent at least six family-level lineages (four subclades of the Ostreobium clade and endolithic clades #1 and #2).

Discussion

Multi-marker view of coral skeleton microbiome

This study highlights how multi-marker approaches can enrich biodiversity surveys. Our results show that the commonly used 16S and 18S rDNA markers severely underestimate algal diversity and that no metabarcode, in isolation, is sufficient to characterize complex microbiomes. The multi-marker data increase the range of microbial taxa recovered from the samples and yields massive savings when compared to traditional methods (Fig. 1).

The multi-marker method allows combining the qualities of each marker for more comprehensive biodiversity surveys (e.g.32). The 16S rDNA, for example, retrieved the highest number of OTUs and is convenient for cross-comparability with the vast number of studies focused on bacterial communities, but it underestimates algal diversity. Commonly used universal primers for highly conserved rRNA genes (16S and 18S) capture a wide range of microbial taxa at the expense of losing power to detect closely related species. The tufA marker has a higher rate of evolution especially at third codon positions and yields many more green algal OTUs as well as a better-supported phylogeny (Supplementary Figs S1–S4). Further, some organisms are difficult or impossible to amplify with standard primer pairs, presumably due to substitutions at primer binding sites, but can be detected using the multi-marker approach. For instance, the 18S rDNA marker did not retrieve any OTU of the siphonous green algae (Bryopsidales), while 112 were obtained with tufA. Nevertheless, the 18S rDNA was the only marker yielding OTUs of another order of green algae (Cladophorales; Supplementary Fig. S3). Like dinoflagellates, this green algal order possesses an unusual plastid configuration that prevents amplification with standard plastid markers33. We found 5 OTUs in the Cladophorales and this is the first record of their occurrence in coral skeletons.

Corals harbour a particular microbiome in their skeletons29,30. Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria were the predominant prokaryotic members, in agreement with some metabarcoding studies of coral skeletons30,34. A recent study indicates that green sulphur bacteria are prevalent in skeletons of Isopora palifera35. We found that these bacteria compose only a small fraction of the prokaryotic community in the corals analysed here (in agreement with one other study targeting endolithic bacteria30). We also found a diverse community of cyanobacteria, which was best characterized with the 23S rDNA marker. To our knowledge, this is the first record of Acaryochloris marina in skeletons of living corals. This cyanobacterium produces chlorophyll-d and is known to occupy niches depleted of visible light36. Many other cyanobacterial OTUs could not be classified at lower taxonomic ranks with the RDP classifier, but might reveal interesting groups specialized in the endolithic niche when analysed in a phylogenetic context.

Highly diverse endolithic green algae

We found that the genus Ostreobium, previously thought to be composed of only three species, is a 500 million year-old complex comprising more than 80 taxonomic units at the near-species level (Fig. 3). The lineage is divided into four well-supported subclades with divergence times comparable to the family level in the seaweed lineages of the siphonous green algae (Fig. 3). A recent study in which reef rubble and coralline algae were sequenced also revealed a large Ostreobium diversity37.

Our results also revealed a large number of green algae outside the Ostreobidineae clade that were not known to occur in coral skeletons. One of the lineages–endolithic clade #2 in Fig. 3–is exclusively composed of endolithic algae never described before and constitutes a new family, nested among larger-bodied seaweed lineages. Endolithic clade #1 is related to Pseudochlorodesmis, which forms small turfs growing out of hard substrata and it is known for having a problematic classification and high cryptic diversity38. Our results suggest that this lineage consists of primarily endolithic algae that only occasionally grow out of their rock but retain most of their biomass inside of it. Likewise, the two OTUs matching the macroalgae species Halimeda discoidea and H. micronesica, both of which were present in the areas where we collected, suggests Halimeda species have an endolithic life stage. Although the possibility of a contamination cannot be discarded entirely (e.g. the possibility of spores or gametes in the seawater), the high abundance of reads and their presence in several samples, even after rigorous quality control, indicate that this is unlikely. Endolithic “Conchocelis” stages have been described for red algal seaweeds39 but never for Halimeda. The life cycle of Halimeda has never been completed in culture40, perhaps because of unknown life stages such as these. Halimeda and many of the green algal endolithic lineages found here have also been sequenced from limestone substrates in a recently published study37.

We also retrieved OTUs related to three algae species that are known to bore into limestone: two OTUs are closely related to Phaeophila dendroides, two to Ochlochaete hystrix and two are related to Ulvella spp. Phaeophila is known to bore into coral skeletons, although to a lesser extent than Ostreobium41. Ulvella species have been reported as endophytic in other algae and as a pathogenic species in the skeleton of gorgonian corals42,43. Ochlochaete hystrix was found growing in shells39. This is the first time that Ulvella and Ochlochaete are reported in live stony coral skeletons.

When observing unexpected results such as the massive biodiversity of Ostreobium species and the presence of macroalgal species in an endolithic environment, it is desirable to address potential sequencing artifacts and contamination issues. Potential sources of contamination include the living coral tissue and the surrounding water. We have taken precautions to limit these sources of contamination in the field and during data processing. A good indication that our results do not result from spurious contaminations is that they are relatively abundant in multiple samples. Methodological artifacts include tag jumping and chimera formation44,45 and we have taken several precautions to avoid an overestimation of biodiversity due to these potential problems: 1) we apply a conservative similarity threshold to cluster OTUs; 2) we use a conservative de novo OTU clustering method (UPARSE) that is efficient in filtering chimeras without a reference database46; 3) our pipeline only keeps OTUs if they exceed 5 reads across the entire dataset; 4) our pipeline only keeps OTUs in individual samples if they exceed 2 reads in that sample; 5) we use a variety of controls including 10 mock extractions and 6 PCR negative controls. Due to these precautions, we may underestimate the endolithic microbial diversity but we rather err on the side of caution.

Ecology and Evolution

Our phylogenetic analyses show that the Ostreobium clade originated in the Ordovician, around 500 my ago (Fig. 3 and47), which is in agreement with the oldest trace fossils attributed to this alga48. Although this pre-dates the existence of modern scleractinian corals, traces of ancestral Ostreobium lineages have been found in limestone rocks formed by extinct rugose corals, shells and stromatoporoids48,49, attesting the old origins of the endolithic lifestyle. Our results show that multiple Ostreobium lineages survived the Permian mass extinction and diversified after the Triassic, together with the rise of scleractinian reefs50. The appearance of endolithic clades #1 and #2 falls in the late Paleozoic, clade #1 diversified in the Mesozoic while clade #2 continued to diversify during the Cenozoic.

The ability to bore into coral skeletons evolved independently over 20 times in 12 Ulvophycean families (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Fig. S3 for Cladophora). This is surprising because Ostreobium and Phaeophila were thought to be the only green algae able to live within skeletons of live corals. The skeleton is an extreme environment for algae due to low light conditions and exposure to daily fluctuations of pH and oxygen levels caused by the holobiont’s photosynthesis and respiration5. The endolithic niche also varies depending on the coral species and external environmental conditions. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the endolithic lineages discovered here are not homogeneously distributed among these different niches. Indeed, the study of Gutner-Hoch and Fine13 suggests niche differentiation across depth gradients in the distribution of Ostreobium genotypes and some species-specific associations with corals.

The effects of diversity and distribution of endolithic algae on the coral holobiont is still to be investigated. For example, tolerance to thermal stress in some coral species is partly dependent on the relative abundance of certain Symbiodinium types, which can change in response to environmental perturbations51. Endolithic algal biomass within corals increases under elevated temperature and pCO28, but it is unknown whether relative abundances of different lineages change, as is the case for Symbiodinium and whether these different lineages have different ecological roles in the holobiont. By uncovering the diversity of endolithic algae, we set the stage and present methods to investigate these ecological interactions in detail. Scleractinian corals have been associated with endolithic algae since early in their evolution (Fig. 3), hence one would expect to find a variety of symbiotic associations ranging from mutualism to amensalism and perhaps parasitism, but these are yet to be discovered.

Conclusion and perspectives

This study shows that metabarcoding surveys of coral-associated microbiomes based only on 16S rDNA or 18S rDNA underestimate the diversity of entire families of organisms, some of which have critical roles in the holobiont. We put forward the use of a cost effective multi-marker approach for more comprehensive biodiversity surveys. Our results reveal that both prokaryotic (e.g. cyanobacteria) and eukaryotic members of the microbiome within coral skeletons are more diverse than previously thought, offering interesting perspectives for future research on the interactions among these microorganisms.

By using a high-resolution marker and a phylogenetic framework we found six endolithic algal clades with divergence times close to the family level. Our results show that the oldest endolithic lineages originated ca. 500 million years ago and the transition to a coral-endolithic lifestyle happened over 20 times in green algae evolution. With this baseline of their biodiversity and evolution at hand, it becomes possible to design ecophysiological experiments to investigate the adaptation of the different lineages to the endolithic niche. We are also applying the multi-marker environmental sequencing method in comparative ecology settings, for example, to study whether different coral species are associated with particular algal lineages and how coral-algal associations change as a function of ecological conditions. Besides helping to understand how these different lineages affect the holobiome resilience under environmental stress, this approach is likely to reveal a large number of species in other eukaryotic groups and assist to shed light on the darkest matter of microbial diversity.

Materials and Methods

Sampling and DNA isolation

The sampling was designed to set a solid baseline of the biodiversity and evolution of the endolithic community. We collected 132 coral skeleton samples from a wide variety of habitats and coral genera in Australia and Papua New Guinea (Supplementary Table 1). We chose not to focus our collections on systematic samples for comparative studies (i.e. multiple replicates for beta diversity analysis) at this stage. Instead, we targeted at a broad diversity of coral species and ecological conditions (depth, microhabitat) to increase chances of detecting different endolithic species.

After collection, the coral living tissue was removed and samples were stored in RNAlater or 100% ethanol. The environmental DNA was extracted using the Wizard Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Promega) or a phenol-chloroform protocol (Supplementary Materials). Although different DNA isolation protocols may be biased towards extracting certain groups of organisms more than others, we chose to analyse these samples together because we do not perform any comparative (e.g. beta-diversity) analysis that could be negatively affected by it. Ten mock DNA extractions were performed together with the samples DNA isolation to detect possible laboratory contaminants.

Library preparation

We used a two-step PCR procedure to prepare Illumina sequencing libraries for multiple samples and markers. In order to add complexity to the library we added 0–3 random base pairs at the 5′ end of the primers52, followed by an overhang tail of 33 bp (Supplementary Table S2). We replaced a commonly used commercial kit (Nextera Index kit) by custom made oligos containing dual indices (8 bp) and Illumina adapters (Supplementary Table S2), which are ligated to the amplicons in the 2nd PCR reaction. The details about the primers and both PCR amplification steps use here are given in the Supplementary Materials. Negative controls for all PCRs were sequenced and OTUs from those libraries were excluded in step 11 of the data processing workflow described below. We purified the samples using home-made magnetic beads as described in Rohland and Reich27, quantified, normalized and pooled the samples together (See Supplementary Materials for details). The libraries were sequenced with the Illumina MiSeq platform (2 × 300 bp paired end reads).

Data processing pipeline

The steps used to process the multi-gene dataset, perform the quality control and OTU clustering were (see also Fig. 1B and Supplementary Materials for details):

  1. 1

    Remove the reverse complement of adapters from short amplicons.

  2. 2

    Separate genes into different files. With our library preparation design, the MiSeq run yields one file containing all four amplicons per sample, which can be teased apart based on primers sequence.

  3. 3

    Trim 3′ ends of reads to improve consensus quality.

  4. 4

    Merge forward and reverse reads using FLASH53.

  5. 5

    Filter merged reads based on a quality threshold (average of 35 per merged sequence) using PRINSEQ54.

  6. 6

    Trim primers from merged reads. Sequences that do not meet a minimum length threshold and/or do not have the primer sequence at the 3′ and 5′ ends are excluded in order to ensure global trimming.

  7. 7

    Format the sequence headers to include sample name, run name and read number, then generate one file per gene containing all samples.

  8. 8

    Cluster OTUs with the UPARSE pipeline46. Based on the divergence of the tufA gene among Bryopsidales we used a similarity threshold of 98% for OTU clustering in this marker, which is a conservative threshold for species level. For the other markers we used the default threshold of 97% (see Supplementary Materials).

  9. 9

    Alignment using PyNAST55 for 16S and 18S rDNA sequences and MAFFT56 for 23S rDNA and tufA.

  10. 10

    Assign taxonomy using the Naïve Bayesian Classifier (RDP) implemented in QIIME19,28. We used RDP taxonomic assignments to: i) infer the abundance of reads assigned to the main microbial groups; and ii) pre-filter OTUs to build a green algae phylogeny: OTUs that were not classified as “Eukaryotic” were excluded from the tufA phylogenetic analysis. Likewise, only OTUs classified as “Chloroplast” in the 16S rDNA dataset were included in the 16S phylogeny.

  11. 11

    Filter OTUs found in negative controls.

  12. 12

    Filter OTU table by minimum count (2) of reads per OTU per sample.

  13. 13

    Filter rare OTUs and produce final filtered OTU fasta file.

  14. 14

    Produce final OTU table and statistics.

Phylogenetic analysis

In order to place the OTUs in a green algal phylogeny, we created reference alignments containing tufA, rbcL, 18S, 16S and 23S rDNA sequences of green algae (Supplementary Materials). We subsequently added the sequence data for the OTUs to the multi-locus alignment, producing one alignment per amplicon (4833–9489 bp). We aligned the OTUs with the reference sequences using Geneious57 and MAFFT56. We used Partitioned Model Tester v.1.03 (https://github.com/hverbruggen/PMT) to identify the best-fit model of molecular evolution and partitioning strategy, then reconstructed the phylogeny using RAxML58, with Prasinococcus capsulatus as outgroup. OTUs that did not fall within the core Chlorophyta were excluded from the analysis.

We calibrated the phylogeny containing the tufA OTUs in geological time with the PhyloBayes program59 using node ages estimated in a previous study47. To infer the origins of the coral skeleton-boring nature, we classified taxa into coral-endolithic or non-coral-endolithic. Besides the OTUs retrieved here, the following species were classified as coral-endolithic: Phaeophila dendroides, Ulvella endozoica and Ostreobium spp., which have been reported from coral skeletons4,41,42 and Halimeda discoidea and H. micronesica, which have identical tufA sequences to two retrieved OTUs. We estimated the ancestral states with 1000 simulations of stochastic mapping using the R package phytools60 and plotted the average log-likelihood of the ancestral states along the tree with TreeGradients v.1.03 (available at www.phycoweb.net).

Additional Information

How to cite this article: Rossetto Marcelino, V. and Verbruggen, H. Multi-marker metabarcoding of coral skeletons reveals a rich microbiome and diverse evolutionary origins of endolithic algae. Sci. Rep. 6, 31508; doi: 10.1038/srep31508 (2016).