We can now measure changes in the thousands of different and invisible microbes that contribute to healthy reef communities.
In 2012, Nature revealed that humans provide a home to thousands of different species of microbes, in a series of papers that opened a path to understanding the impact of the human microbiome on our health.
Today, a paper in Nature documents over 800,000 microbial genomes, identifying over 500 new bacterial species and over 300,000 distinct viruses in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.
This invisible community was documented using DNA found in samples of seawater from 48 reefs, by a research team led by The University of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
The authors believe this is the first time that the microbiome of the open waters of reef systems on the Great Barrier Reef has been comprehensively surveyed. They have created the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database which is available to all reef researchers.
"Now, we can start to explore what makes a healthy reef microbiome, and how these invisible communities respond to changes on the Great Barrier Reef such as bleaching, storms, sediment, fishing and other stresses," Professor Philip Hugenholtz, a microbiologist at the University of Queensland and a senior author on the paper said.
Researchers from James Cook University, University of Melbourne and University of Tasmania also contributed to the study.
