Dataset Information

Community Structure of Macrobiota and Environmental Parameters in Shallow Water Hydrothermal Vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan.

ABSTRACT: Hydrothermal vents represent a unique habitat in the marine ecosystem characterized with high water temperature and toxic acidic chemistry. Vents are distributed at depths ranging from a few meters to several thousand meters. The biological communities of shallow-water vents have, however, been insufficiently studied in most biogeographic areas. We attempted to characterize the macrofauna and macroflora community inhabiting the shallow-water vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan, to identify the main abiotic factors shaping the community structure and the species distribution. We determined that positively buoyant vent fluid exhibits a more pronounced negative impact to species on the surface water than on the bottom layer. Species richness increased with horizontal distance from the vent, and continuing for a distance of 2000 m, indicating that the vent fluid may exert a negative impact over several kilometers. The community structure off Kueishan Island displayed numerous transitions along the horizontal gradient, which were broadly congruent with changes in environmental conditions. Combination of variation in Ca2+, Cl-, temperature, pH and depth were revealed to show the strongest correlation with the change in benthic community structure, suggesting multiple factors of vent fluid were influencing the associated fauna. Only the vent crabs of Kueishan Island may have an obligated relationship with vents and inhabit the vent mouths because other fauna found nearby are opportunistic taxa that are more tolerant to acidic and toxic environments.

SUBMITTER: Chan BK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4744018 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Community Structure of Macrobiota and Environmental Parameters in Shallow Water Hydrothermal Vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan.

Chan Benny Kwok Kan BK Wang Teng-Wei TW Chen Pin-Chen PC Lin Chia-Wei CW Chan Tin-Yam TY Tsang Ling Ming LM

PloS one 20160205 2

Hydrothermal vents represent a unique habitat in the marine ecosystem characterized with high water temperature and toxic acidic chemistry. Vents are distributed at depths ranging from a few meters to several thousand meters. The biological communities of shallow-water vents have, however, been insufficiently studied in most biogeographic areas. We attempted to characterize the macrofauna and macroflora community inhabiting the shallow-water vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan, to identify the mai ...[more]

PMID: 26849440

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Project description:This paper reports the diversity of fungi associated with substrates collected at a shallow hydrothermal vent field at Kueishan Island, Taiwan, using both culture-based and metabarcoding methods. Culture of fungi from yellow sediment (with visible sulfur granules), black sediment (no visible sulfur granules), the vent crab Xenograpsus testudinatus, seawater and, animal egg samples resulted in a total of 94 isolates. Species identification based on the internal transcribed spacer regions of the rDNA revealed that the yellow sediment samples had the highest species richness with 25 species, followed by the black sediment (23) and the crab (13). The Ascomycota was dominant over the Basidiomycota; the dominant orders were Agaricales, Capnodiales, Eurotiales, Hypocreales, Pleosporales, Polyporales and Xylariales. Hortaea werneckii was the only common fungus isolated from the crab, seawater, yellow and black sediment samples. The metabarcoding analysis amplifying a small fragment of the rDNA (from 18S to 5.8S) recovered 7-27 species from the black sediment and 12-27 species from the yellow sediment samples and all species belonged to the Ascomycota and the Basidiomycota. In the yellow sediments, the dominant order was Pleosporales and this order was also dominant in the black sediment together with Sporidiobolales. Based on the results from both methods, 54 and 49 species were found in the black and yellow sediments, respectively. Overall, a higher proportion of Ascomycota (~70%) over Basidiomycota was recovered in the yellow sediment and the two phyla were equally abundant in the black sediment. The top five dominant fungal orders in descending order based on species richness were Pleosporales>Eurotiales>Polyporales>Hypocreales>Capnodiales in the black sediment samples, and Polyporales>Pleosporales>Eurotiales>Capnodiales>Hypocreales in the yellow sediment samples. This study is the first to observe a high diversity of fungi associated with various substrates at a marine shallow water hydrothermal vent ecosystem. While some fungi found in this study were terrestrial species and their airborne spores might have been deposited into the marine sediment, several pathogenic fungi of animals, including Acremonium spp., Aspergillus spp., Fusarium spp., Malassezia spp., Hortaea werneckii, Parengyodontium album, and Westerdykella dispersa, were recovered suggesting that these fungi may be able to cause diseases of marine animals.

Project description:Hydrothermal vent (HTV) systems are important habitats for understanding the biological processes of extremophiles on Earth and their relative contributions to material and energy cycles in the ocean. Current understanding on hydrothermal systems have been primarily focused on deep-sea HTVs, and little is known about the functions and metabolisms of microorganisms in shallow-water HTVs (SW-HTVs), which are distinguished from deep-sea HTVs by a depth limit of 200 m. In this study, we analyzed metagenomes of sulfur-rich sediment samples collected from a SW-HTV of Kueishan Island, located in a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. Comparing with a previously published report of pelagic samples from the nearby sampling site, microbial communities in the SW-HTV sediments enriching with genes of both aerobic and anaerobic respiration inferred variable environments in the tested sediments. Abundant genes of energy metabolism encoding sulfur oxidation, H2 oxidation, and carbon fixation were detected from the sediment samples. Sixty-eight metagenome-assembled-genomes (MAGs) were reconstructed to further understand the metabolism and potential interactions between different microbial taxa in the SW-HTVs sediment. MAGs with the highest abundant were chemolithotrophic sulfur-oxidization bacteria, including Sulfurovum represented Campylobacteria involved sox multienzyme, sulfide oxidation genes and rTCA cycle, and Gammaproteobacteria involved dsr gene and CBB cycle. In addition, Desulfobacterota with the potential to participate in sulfur-disproportionating processes also had higher abundance than the sample's overall mean value. The interaction of these bacterial groups allows the microbial communities to efficiently metabolize a large variety of sulfur compounds. In addition, the potential to use simple organic carbon, such as acetate, was found in chemolithotrophic Campylobacterial MAGs. Collectively, our results revealed the complexity of environmental conditions of the vent sediment and highlight the interactive relationships of the dominant microbial populations in driving sulfur cycles in the SW-HTV sediments off Kueishan Island.

Dataset Information

Community Structure of Macrobiota and Environmental Parameters in Shallow Water Hydrothermal Vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan.

Publications

Community Structure of Macrobiota and Environmental Parameters in Shallow Water Hydrothermal Vents off Kueishan Island, Taiwan.

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