Figure 4
Prokaryotic mucus re-colonization after antibiotics disturbance: non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) plot of the Bray–Curtis-based dissimilarity matrix of prokaryotic communities colonizing the mucus of Porites astreoides and their shifts after a disturbance event. The successional path, here represented by arrows, was reconstructed based on the position of group centroids and follows each group of corals (antibiotic-treated, a–f; control, g–l) at a particular time (indicated by color gradient). The starting point ‘in situ - initial community composition’ represents the original in situ state, followed by the shift in the community composition in the aquaria incubation (dashed arrows) and finally describing the successional path over 28 days observed in the field after the two experimental groups of corals were brought back to the reef (normal arrows). Prokaryotic community structure of individual colonies is only given for mucus samples collected before the experiment started (in situ_a–l) and on the last day of the experiment (d28_a–l). Polygons indicate the relative position of prokaryotic communities associated with different mucus aging stages (‘new mucus’ versus ‘aged mucus’) characterized during the natural dynamics experiment and are shown as reference. Individual sample points throughout the whole experiment are given in detail in Supplementary Figure S9.
