Dataset: Transplant 16S Sequences

The Varadero Reef is located south-west of the Cartagena Bay close to the southern strait that connects the Bay to the Caribbean Sea in Colombia (10°18'23.3"N, 75°35'08.0"W). The Bay is a receiving estuary from the Magdalena River through the Canal del Dique, a man-made channel whose construction and operation dates back almost a century. Three study sites were considered in order to evaluate the role of the local light environment associated to the Canal del Dique plume on the photosynthetic performance of corals from Varadero: 1) Varadero reef at 3.5m depth (10°18'23.3"N, 75°35'08.0"W), 2) Punta Brava reef at 12m depth (10°11'12.1"N, 75°44'43.0"W), and 3) Cartagena Bay at 3m depth (10°18'5.80"N, 75°34'37.10"W).

Samples were collected using hammers and chisels as well as corers. Water samples were collected by passing approximately 1 L of water through a 0.2 micron Sterivex filter. Samples were extracted using the MoBio Powersoil DNA Isolation Kit and sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform.

On October of 2016, flat fragments (~10 cm²) were collected from the edge of 15 coral colonies (n = 45 per site) at the two donor sites (Varadero and Rosario). Coral colonies were chosen randomly at a constant depth of ~3.5 m and ~12 m in Varadero and Rosario, respectively. Fragments were fixed with non-toxic epoxy (Z-Spar A-788 epoxy) to PVC panels placed at the same depth from donor colonies at each site. After acclimation to the local environment (two weeks), corals were transplanted from their naturally turbid (Varadero) and clear (Rosario) environment in equal proportions (n = 15) to each of the three contrasting sites. Samples were collected pre-transplant (mother colony fragment and pre-transplant fragment samples) as well as post-transplant (6 months later). Samples were immediately flash-frozen in a dry shipper post-collection and stored at -80 degrees Celsius until DNA extraction. 50 µL of DNA was extracted from each sample using the MoBio Powersoil DNA Isolation Kit. We performed two-stage amplicon PCR on the V4 region of the 16S small subunit prokaryotic rRNA marker gene using modified versions of the 515F and 806R primers that included common sequence 1 (CS1) and common sequence 2 (CS2) linkers at the 5' end, the universal primer sequences that are required for Illumina MiSeq amplicon tagging and indexing. Amplicons were barcoded with Fluidigm Illumina primers and pooled for sequencing. The amplicon pool was then purified with AMPure XP beads and sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform at the DNA Services Facility at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

These samples and their sequences were later processed and analyzed using the Varadero Transplant Mapping File. See related dataset: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/789290