[Coral-List] ICRS session announcement: Reef microbiomes

[Amy Apprill]

Dear coral reef community,

We would like to draw your attention to a reef microbiome session at the 
upcoming ICRS 2020 meeting:

*What are the drivers of similarity and dissimilarity within the 
microbiome of reefs and reef organisms? (Theme 4)*

Microorganisms are associated with diverse protist and animal life on 
reefs and these microbial communities or microbiomes play important 
roles in the health, ecology and even behavior of their hosts. Recent 
advances in sequencing, microscopy and other technological approaches 
have provided opportunities to examine host-associated microbiomes 
in-depth, providing glimpses into patterns of microbial diversity, 
community composition as well as the location and specific symbiotic 
nature of microorganisms associated with reefs and reef-dwelling hosts. 
With this new wealth of knowledge brings an opportunity to understand 
the defining patterns governing these relationships among diverse hosts, 
environments and experimental conditions, which may provide novel 
insights into host-microbiome interactions. At the same time there is 
also an opportunity to learn from disparate host-microbiome patterns, 
which may be central to understanding specific organismal or 
environmental adaptations. The goal of this session is to bring together 
microbiome studies across diverse hosts (protists, corals, fish, 
invertebrates, etc.), representing disparate reef environments 
(tropical, temperate, cold and deep water) as well as within the context 
of natural or induced experimental conditions (e.g., temperature stress, 
ocean acidification, disease, macroalgal exposure, etc.). As a 
scientific community and throughout the session, we will compare, 
contrast and discuss what is similar and distinct in microbiome 
diversity, community structure and defining taxa within these studies, 
with the overarching goal of shedding new light on governing principles 
of host-microbiome relationships and advancing our understanding of how 
those host-microbiome relationships respond to environmental change on 
reefs.

Session chairs: Amy Apprill, Koty Sharp and Tracy Ainsworth

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!