In particular, the nature of the polysaccharides

available for fungal growth induced a specific transcriptional response aiming at the targeted enzymatic degradation of the given polysaccharides. “
“Natural and anthropogenic impacts such as terrestrial runoff, influence the water quality along the coast of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and may in turn affect coral reef communities. Associated bacterial biofilms respond rapidly to environmental conditions and are potential find more bioindicators for changes in water quality. As a prerequisite to study the effects of water quality on biofilm communities, appropriate biofilm substrates for deployment in the field must be developed and evaluated. This study investigates the effect of different settlement substrates (i.e. glass slides, ceramic tiles, coral skeletons and reef sediments) on bacterial biofilm communities grown in situ for 48 days at two locations in the Whitsunday Island Group (Central GBR) during two sampling times. Bacterial communities associated with the biofilms were analysed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism

(T-RFLP) and clone library analyses of 16S rRNA genes. Findings revealed that substrate type had little influence on bacterial community composition. Of particular relevance, glass slides and coral skeletons exhibited very similar communities during both sampling BAY 80-6946 datasheet times, suggesting the suitability of standardized glass slides for long-term biofilm indicator studies in tropical coral reef ecosystems. Similar to coastal regions worldwide, local natural and anthropogenic impacts such as land runoff from agriculture deliver inorganic nutrients, sediments, freshwater and pesticides to the coastal and coral reef waters of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) (Bell, 1991), and thereby influence the

water quality of this ecosystem. L-NAME HCl Coral reefs harbour abundant bacterial biofilms that are crucial catalysts of biogeochemical nutrient cycling (Battin et al., 2003) and are therefore critical to reef ecosystem functioning. This underlines the necessity to understand community composition and function of microorganisms within coral reef-associated biofilms. Marine biofilms are complex microbial communities comprising of surface-attached microorganisms embedded in an extracellular polymeric matrix (Mihm et al., 1981). The bacterial communities within biofilms respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions, and therefore bacterial community composition of artificially and field grown biofilms have previously been used as bioindicators for water quality in freshwater (Campbell et al., 2011), estuarine (Jones et al., 2007; Nocker et al., 2007) and temperate and polar coastal marine environments (Moss et al., 2006; Webster & Negri, 2006; Dang et al., 2008). In addition, biofilms may also be potential bioindicators for water quality in tropical coastal coral reef ecosystems (Kriwy & Uthicke, 2011).