This paper describes a dataset of microbial communities from four different sponge species: Irciniaoros (Schmidt, 1864), Irciniavariabilis (Schmidt, 1862), Sarcotragusspinosulus Schmidt, 1862 and Sarcotragusfasciculatus (Pallas, 1766). The examined sponges all belong to Demospongiae (Class); Keratosa (Subclass); Dictyoceratida (Order); Irciniidae (Family). Samples were collected by scuba diving at depths between 6-14 m from two sampling sites of rocky formations at the northern coast of Crete (Cretan Sea, eastern Mediterranean) and were subjected to metabarcoding for the V5-V6 region of the 16S rRNA gene.
Keywords: 454 GS FLX Titanium; amplicon sequencing; eastern Mediterranean; marine metagenome; pyrosequencing; sponge metagenome.
Katerina Skaraki, Christina Pavloudi, Thanos Dailianis, Jacques Lagnel, Adriani Pantazidou, Antonios Magoulas, Georgios Kotoulas.