Soft Coral Microbiome Responses to Heat Stress Across Latitudes

Three Malacalcyonacean soft coral species from polar, temperate, and tropical environments were analyzed using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. The dataset, authored by Miriam Pascual-Benito and last updated in April 2026, explores bacterial community composition and the impact of experimental heat exposure. Host species and temperature treatment jointly explained 36.7% of the variation in microbial composition.

Use Cases

• Modeling microbiome shifts under thermal stress based on latitudinal origin
• Comparing bacterial alpha diversity changes across coral species mentioned in the description
• Analyzing the convergence of coral and seawater bacterial communities under heat stress
• Studying the dominance of the Pseudomonadota phylum in different marine environments

Strengths

• Data includes experimental heat exposure under controlled laboratory conditions
• Analysis covers a latitudinal gradient from polar to tropical coastal environments
• Results quantify that host and temperature explain 36.7% of microbial variation

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• The 7.7 MB file size suggests the primary data may be a supplementary document rather than raw sequencing data

Provenance

Source

Miriam Pascual-Benito via figshare

Collection Method

16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of coral microbiomes from natural habitats and after lab-based heat exposure

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 07:44:51; freshness should be verified

Geography

Coastal environments across a latitudinal gradient (polar, temperate, tropical)