Symbioses between animals and microbes are ubiquitous, and often have drastic fitness
effects on both parties. A rapidly growing body of research now shows that many of these …

Background When deep-sea hydrothermal fluids mix with cold oxygenated fluids, minerals
precipitate out of solution and form hydrothermal deposits. These actively venting deep-sea …

Infectious diseases caused by bacterial pathogens still constitute one of the major human
health threats (1). Within the host body, pathogenic bacteria face a wide variety of hostile …

Sponges host a remarkable diversity of microbial symbionts, however, the benefit their
microbes provide is rarely understood. Here, we describe two new sponge species from …

The gut bacterial community of wood-feeding beetles has been examined for its role on
plant digestion and biocontrol method development. Monochamus alternatus and …

The deep-sea tubeworm Riftia pachyptila lacks a digestive system but completely relies on
bacterial endosymbionts for nutrition. Although the symbiont has been studied in detail on …

Sponges (Porifera) are ancient metazoans that harbour diverse microorganisms, whose
symbiotic interactions are essential for the host's health and function. Although symbiosis …

The marine bioprospecting could be considered as a new phenomenon, and already
potentially more promising than terrestrial one in terms of possible discovery of new …

Lichens are obligate symbioses between fungi and green algae or cyanobacteria. Most
lichens resynthesize their symbiotic thalli from propagules, but some develop within the …

Tunicates are useful models for exploring microbiomes because they have an innate
immune system resembling that of chordates. Automated ribosomal RNA intergenic spacer …