The sea sponge is about as simple as an animal can get, but its associated bacterial community—its microbiome —is known to approach the complexity of the diverse microbiome in the human gut.
Now, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have shown that different species of Hexadella sponges each have a highly specific and stable microbiome, not only in terms of the most abundant members of the associated microbial community, but the rare members as well. They published their results recently in the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) Journal. “When we looked at what microbial community occurred in a species of sponge, we always found the same community, no matter where geographically and at which depth the sponge [lived],” says lead author Julie Reveillaud, a postdoctoral associate in the MBL’s Bay Paul Center. Read more here!… More:
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