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Abstract Coral bleaching is a well-documented and increasingly widespread phenomenon in reefs across the globe, yet there has been relatively little research on the implications for reef water column microbiology and biogeochemistry. A mesocosm heating experiment and bottle incubation compared how unbleached and bleached corals alter dissolved organic matter (DOM) exudation in response to thermal stress and subsequent effects on microbial growth and community structure in the water column. Thermal stress of healthy corals tripled DOM flux relative to ambient corals. DOM exudates from stressed corals (heated and/or previously bleached) were compositionally distinct from healthy corals and significantly increased growth of bacterioplankton, enriching copiotrophs and putative pathogens. Together these results demonstrate how the impacts of both short-term thermal stress and long-term bleaching may extend into the water column, with altered coral DOM exudation driving microbial feedbacks that influence how coral reefs respond to and recover from mass bleaching events. 

This dataset contains raw data for figures 5 (genus-level microbial community compositions) and 6 (predicted metabolic functions, pathway types), R code for PERMANOVAs (Table 3), DESeq2 and random forest (rfpermute) analyses, and R code to generate figures 5, 6b, S5 & S6. Overview of .txt files: Genus_16S_Counts.txt Counts data used for DESeq2 analysis (Fig. 5c). Genus_16S_relAbund.txt Relative abundance data used for Fig. 5a, b & d. MicFunPred_MetaCyc_types_all Predicted pathway abundance data for all pathway types used for DESeq2 (Fig. 6b), PERMANOVA (Table 3) and column clustering of Fig. 6b. MicFunPred_MetaCyc_AA_types.txt Amino acids (Fig. 6b) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_CH_types.txt Carbohydrates (Fig. 6b) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_EM _types.txt Energy metabolism (Fig. 6b) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_FAL _types.txt Fatty acids and lipids (Fig. 6b) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_SM _types.txt Secondary metabolism (Fig. 6b) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_OBiosyn _types.txt Other biosynthesis (Fig. S6) MicFunPred_MetaCyc_ODeg _types.txt Other degradation (Fig. S6)