[Coral-List] Barrier reef bleaching

[Eugene Shinn]

I was just made aware of the following paper. Here is the abstract. 
Remember Aspergillus Sydowii in African dust has been implicated in 
widespread Caribbean seafan disease. Gene

Abstract: Dust has been widely recognised as an important source of 
nutrients in the marine environment and as a vector for transporting 
pathogenic microorganisms. Disturbingly, in the wake of a dust storm 
event along the eastern Australian coast line in 2009, the Continuous 
Plankton Recorder collected masses of fungal spores and mycelia 
(~150,000 spores/m3) forming a floating raft that covered a coastal area 
equivalent to 25 times the surface of England. Cultured A. sydowii 
strains exhibited varying metabolite profiles, but all produced sydonic 
acid, a chemotaxonomic marker for A. sydowii. The Australian marine 
fungal strains share major metabolites and display comparable metabolic 
diversity to Australian terrestrial strains and to strains pathogenic to 
Caribbean coral. Secondary colonisation of the rafts by other fungi, 
including strains of Cladosporium, Penicillium and other Aspergillus 
species with distinct secondary metabolite profiles, was also 
encountered. Our bioassays revealed that the dust-derived marine fungal 
extracts and known A. sydowii metabolites such as sydowic acid, 
sydowinol and sydowinin A adversely affect photophysiological 
performance (Fv/Fm) of the coral reef dinoflagellate endosymbiont 
Symbiodinium. Different Symbiodinium clades exhibited varying 
sensitivities, mimicking sensitivity to coral bleaching phenomena. The 
detection of such large amounts of A. sydowii following this dust storm 
event has potential implications for the health of coral environments 
such as the Great Barrier Reef.

The article is published in Marine Druges
Article
Aspergillus Sydowii Marine Fungal Bloom in Australian Coastal Waters, 
Its Metabolites and Potential Impact on Symbiodinium Dinoflagellates
Aiko Hayashi 1, Andrew Crombie 2, Ernest Lacey 2, Anthony J. Richardson 
3,4, Daniel Vuong 2, Andrew M. Piggott 5 and Gustaaf Hallegraeff 1,*
1 2
3 4 5
*
Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, 
Hobart, Tasmania 7004, Australia; aiko.hayashi at utas.edu.au Microbial 
Screening Technologies, Building A, 28-54 Percival Rd, Smithfield NSW 
2164, Australia; acrombie at microbialscreening.com (A.C.); 
elacey at microbialscreening.com (E.L.); dvuong at microbialscreening.com (D.V.)
CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research, Ecosciences Precinct, Brisbane, 
Queensland 4102, Australia; anthony.richardson at csiro.au Centre for 
Applications in Natural Resource Mathematics, School of Mathematics and 
Physics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia
Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie University, 
NSW 2109, Australia; andrew.piggott at mq.edu.au Correspondence: 
gustaaf.hallegraeff at utas.edu.au; Tel.: +61-3-6226-2623
Academic Editors: Samuel Bertrand and Olivier Grovel Received: 9 
February 2016; Accepted: 3 March 2016; Published: 16 March 2016

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No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
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