Smith, G.W. and  K. B. Ritchie. 1995.  Bacterial Studies on White-Band 
Disease of Acropora cervicornis.  European Meeting of the International 
Society for Reef Studies (ISRS).

White-band disease in the Acroporid corals is often reported as 
bleaching due to environmental influences.  Although the first symptoms 
of white-band disease are loss of endosymbiots (bleaching), there is 
good evidence that the disease is caused by a bacterial pathogen.  This 
bacterium has not yet been  identified and the pathiogenesis of the 
disease remains a mystery.

We have compared the structure and the overall activity of bacterial 
communities in the surface mucopolysaccharide layers from normal and 
white-band diseased Acropora cervicornis samples, taken from the coast 
of San Salvador, Bahamas.  Overall bacterial metabolic activity, as 
measured using an INT-linked dehydrogenase assay, was higher in diseased 
tissue compared with normal samples.  Comparisons of the bacterial 
community structures in the SML of diseased and normal corals were made 
using cluster analysis of carbon source utilization patterns.  A strain 
resembling Vibrio charcharia was consistently isolated from white-band 
samples, but not from normal coral samples or from the water mass.  We 
are investigating the role of these isolates as putative patogens of 
white band disease.