This data paper describes bacterial and fungal communities associated with the sponge Chondrilla nucula collected from two Eastern Mediterranean populations (North and South Aegean Sea) and maintained under controlled common-garden conditions simulating present and projected climate scenarios over a period of 3 months. Microbial composition was characterised using two complementary ribosomal marker approaches: Illumina (MiSeq) sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene for Bacteria and Oxford Nanopore (MinION) sequencing of a long 18S-ITS-28S rRNA fragment for Fungi. A total of 24 sponge libraries (3 climate conditions x 2 populations x 4 biological replicates) along with six control libraries (water from three experimental tanks, extraction and PCR blanks) were constructed for each group of microsymbionts. The resulting reads were processed using custom and publicly available bioinformatic pipelines and databases, followed by initial taxonomic assignment. This dataset represents the first fungal community associated with C. nucula and the first bacterial community for this species from the Aegean Sea.
Gioti et al. (2026) studied this question.