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Most marine invertebrates have dispersive larvae and relatively immobile adults. These developmental stages are linked by a settlement event, which is often mediated by specific cues in bacterial biofilms. While larvae distinguish between biofilms from different environments, it remains unknown if they receive information from all, only a few or even just a single bacterial species in natural biofilms. Here we asked how specific is larval settlement to the bacterial community structure and/or taxonomically distinguishable groups of bacteria in epiphytic marine biofilms? We used novel multivariate statistical approaches to investigate if larval settlement of two sea urchins correlated with the microbial community composition. Larval settlement of Heliocidaris erythrogramma revealed a strong correlation with the community composition, highlighted by canonical analysis of principle components, a constrained ordination technique. Using this technique, the importance of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) within communities relative to larval settlement was investigated. Larval settlement not only correlated, both positively and negatively, with the epiphytic bacterial community composition but also with the relative abundance of few OTUs within these communities. In contrast, no such correlation was observed for the other urchin, Holopneustes purpurascens, whose larvae likely respond to bacterial biofilms in a more general way and specifically respond to a defined settlement cue of algal origin.

Sea urchin larvae decipher the epiphytic bacterial community composition when selecting sites for attachment and metamorphosis