Single-polyp metabolomics reveals biochemical structuring of the coral holobiont at multiple scales

Abstract

All biology happens in space, and spatial structuring plays an important role in mediating biological processes at all scales from cells to ecosystems. However, the metabolomic structuring of the coral holobiont has yet to be fully explored. Here, we present a method to detect high-quality metabolomic data from individual coral polyps and apply this method to study the patterning of biochemicals across multiple spatial (~1 mm - ~100 m) and organizational scales (polyp to population). The data show a strong signature for individual coral colonies, a weaker signature of branches within colonies, and variation at the polyp level related to the polyps’ location along a branch. Mapping metabolites to either the coral or algal components of the holobiont reveals that polyp-level variation along the length of a branch was largely driven by molecules associated with the cnidarian host as opposed to the algal symbiont, predominantly putative sulfur-containing metabolites. This work yields insights on the spatial structuring of biochemicals in the coral holobiont, which is critical for design, analysis, and interpretation of studies on coral reef biochemistry.