The Coral Triangle is the region in the Indo-Pacific with the highest diversity of reef organisms. Coral reefs here have experienced increased anthropogenic stressors since the late 1970s due to destructive fishing, land reclamation, industrialization, and agriculture. Biological observations in the Spermonde Archipelago (SW Sulawesi, Indonesia) started only after large-scale disturbances had begun limiting insights into long-...

Aim The Indo‐Pacific is the world's largest marine biogeographic region. It is characterised by different degrees of connectivity among its subregions and harbours the majority of demosponge species currently known to science. Comparisons between regional sponge faunas have been undertaken in the past, mostly based on morphological species identification. The Sponge Barcoding Project, in tandem with regional DNA taxonomy campa...

Accurate taxonomic identification is essential for defining species boundaries and understanding biodiversity. However, this remains challenging for groups where morphological character evolution is poorly understood or diagnostic traits are absent. Sponges (Phylum Porifera) exemplify this complexity due to their morphological simplicity and phenotypic plasticity. This study applies target capture enrichment of Clade‐Specific...

Dynamics of microbiomes through time are fundamental regarding survival and resilience of their hosts when facing environmental alterations. As for marine species with commercial applications, such as marine sponges, assessing the temporal change of prokaryotic communities allows us to better consider the adaptation of sponges to aquaculture designs. The present study aims to investigate the factors shaping the microbiome of t...

Previous studies on disease in coral reef organisms have neglected the natural distribution of potential pathogens and the genetic factors that underlie disease incidence. This study explores the intricate associations between hosts, microbial communities, putative pathogens, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and virulence factors (VFs) across diverse coral reef biotopes. We observed a substantial compositional overlap of put...

Golf ball sponges are small, sometimes inconspicuous, sponges. They can be found across a range of habitats varying from perturbed and pristine coral reefs to harbours and marine lakes and from the deep sea to shallow waters. They can be difficult to distinguish in the field and have presented some problems with taxonomists lumping and splitting species due to the difficulty in defining clear species boundaries. In the present...

Coral reef ecosystems in Indonesia are under threat due to changes in the environment driven by global climate change, along with local disturbances such as sedimentation and eutrophication. Consequently, comprehensive coral reef monitoring activities have been initiated at numerous locations across Indonesia. In this study, the findings from coral reef health surveys across 14 reef sites (within 40 hectares) in the Bintan are...

Marine karst ecosystems exist at the land-sea interface and are characterised by underwater formations sculpted over time by the action of seawater. Submerged caves and crevices of these ecosystems host a rich array of marine life of which sponges are among the most abundant and diverse components. In the present study, we describe elements of the sponge fauna sampled from a unique karst ecosystem at a remote island, Orchid Is...

In the present study, we compared mucus and gut-associated prokaryotic communities from seven nudibranch species with sediment and seawater from Thai coral reefs using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The nudibranch species were identified as Doriprismatica atromarginata (family Chromodorididae), Jorunna funebris (family Discodorididae), Phyllidiella nigra , Phyllidiella pustulosa , Phyllidia carlsonhoffi , Phyllidia...

Understanding the maintenance and origin of beta diversity is a central topic in ecology. However, the factors that drive diversity patterns and underlying processes remain unclear, particularly for host‐prokaryotic associations. Here, beta diversity patterns were studied in five prokaryotic biotopes, namely, two high microbial abundance (HMA) sponge taxa ( Xestospongia spp. and Hyrtios erectus ), one low microbial abundance (...

The dietary relationship study between marine sponge Xestospongia sp. and its nudibranch predators Jorunna funebris based on the discovery of isoquinolinequinones has long been studied. In this study, chemical investigation of the sponge Xestospongia sp. and nudibranch J. funebris from the South China Sea yielded a new marine alkaloid neopetroside C ( 1 ), together with nine known alkaloids ( 2 – 10 ). The chemical structures...

In the present study, prokaryotic communities from nine sponge species, two octocoral species, sediment and seawater were assessed from Maldivian coral reefs. All host species contained prokaryotic communities, which were distinct from those found in sediment and seawater. Certain host species, however, contained relatively high abundances of environmental OTUs, that is, OTUs recorded in sediment and/or seawater. This was part...

Marine sponges are known to host diverse and abundant communities of microbial symbionts. It has been generally assumed that the bacterial communities of low microbial abundance (LMA) sponges are less diverse than those of high microbial abundance (HMA) sponges. In this study, we used next‐generation sequencing technology to explore the bacterial communities of several biotopes including sponges, seawater, and sediment from th...