ABSTRACT
The coral reef affords a structurally and environmentally complex group of habitats, which maintain an extensive microbial diversity and which control both host function and in due course maintain the progression of the ecosystem. Microbial processes and metabolisms robustly control biogeochemical and ecological functions surrounded by the reef environment, such as food webs, organism life cycles, and chemical and nutrient cycling. Microbial functions are also key drivers of the several factors that control the elasticity of the coral reef environment, such as larval enrollment, colonization, and overall species diversity. For example, chemical signals from the benthic microbial population inuence the arrangement of larvae of many keystone species such as corals and sea urchins (Webster et al. 2004; Huggett et al. 2008). Also, endosymbiosis anked by corals and the eukaryotic dinoagellate genus Symbiodinium is important for the evolutionary achievement of stony corals in the shallow tropics and the long-term existence of the coral reef ecosystem (Rohwer et al. 2001; Yellowlees et al. 2008). It is amazing that little research has been intended at understanding the linkages between the symbionts and coral (communities of bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, and dinoagellates) and macroecological shifts on reefs. Only in recent times, the role of microbial diversity and host-microbe interactions in the response of reef ecosystems to environmental change has been studied.
