Dataset Information

Bacterioplankton Biogeography of the Atlantic Ocean: A Case Study of the Distance-Decay Relationship.

ABSTRACT: In order to determine the influence of geographical distance, depth, and Longhurstian province on bacterial community composition and compare it with the composition of photosynthetic micro-eukaryote communities, 382 samples from a depth-resolved latitudinal transect (51°S-47°N) from the epipelagic zone of the Atlantic ocean were analyzed by Illumina amplicon sequencing. In the upper 100 m of the ocean, community similarity decreased toward the equator for 6000 km, but subsequently increased again, reaching similarity values of 40-60% for samples that were separated by ~12,000 km, resulting in a U-shaped distance-decay curve. We conclude that adaptation to local conditions can override the linear distance-decay relationship in the upper epipelagial of the Atlantic Ocean which is apparently not restrained by barriers to dispersal, since the same taxa were shared between the most distant communities. The six Longhurstian provinces covered by the transect were comprised of distinct microbial communities; ~30% of variation in community composition could be explained by province. Bacterial communities belonging to the deeper layer of the epipelagic zone (140-200 m) lacked a distance-decay relationship altogether and showed little provincialism. Interestingly, those biogeographical patterns were consistently found for bacteria from three different size fractions of the plankton with different taxonomic composition, indicating conserved underlying mechanisms. Analysis of the chloroplast 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that phytoplankton composition was strongly correlated with both free-living and particle associated bacterial community composition (R between 0.51 and 0.62, p < 0.002). The data show that biogeographical patterns commonly found in macroecology do not hold for marine bacterioplankton, most likely because dispersal and evolution occur at drastically different rates in bacteria.

SUBMITTER: Milici M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4845060 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Bacterioplankton Biogeography of the Atlantic Ocean: A Case Study of the Distance-Decay Relationship.

Milici Mathias M Tomasch Jürgen J Wos-Oxley Melissa L ML Decelle Johan J Jáuregui Ruy R Wang Hui H Deng Zhi-Luo ZL Plumeier Iris I Giebel Helge-Ansgar HA Badewien Thomas H TH Wurst Mascha M Pieper Dietmar H DH Simon Meinhard M Wagner-Döbler Irene I

Frontiers in microbiology 20160426

In order to determine the influence of geographical distance, depth, and Longhurstian province on bacterial community composition and compare it with the composition of photosynthetic micro-eukaryote communities, 382 samples from a depth-resolved latitudinal transect (51°S-47°N) from the epipelagic zone of the Atlantic ocean were analyzed by Illumina amplicon sequencing. In the upper 100 m of the ocean, community similarity decreased toward the equator for 6000 km, but subsequently increased aga ...[more]

PMID: 27199923

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Project description:UnlabelledPatterns in the spatial distribution of organisms provide important information about mechanisms underlying biodiversity and the complexity of ecosystems. One of the most well-documented spatial patterns is the distance-decay relationship, which is a universal biogeographic pattern observed repeatedly for plant and animal communities, particularly for microorganisms in natural ecosystems such as soil, ocean, and salt marsh sediment. However, it is uncertain whether the microorganisms exhibit a distance-decay pattern in engineered ecosystems. Therefore, we measured the distance-decay relationship across various microbial functional and phylogenetic groups in 26 biological wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in China using a functional gene array (GeoChip 4.2). We found that microbial communities of activated sludge in WWTPs exhibited a significant but very weak distance-decay relationship. The taxon-area z values for different functional and phylogenetic groups were <0.0065, which is about 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than those observed in microbial communities elsewhere. Variation-partitioning analysis (VPA) showed that the relationships were driven by both environmental heterogeneity and geographic distance. Collectively, these results provided new insights into the spatial scaling of microbial communities in engineering ecosystems and highlighted the importance of environmental heterogeneity and geographic distance in shaping biogeographic patterns.ImportanceDetermining the distance-decay relationship of microbial biodiversity is important but challenging in microbial ecology. All studies to date are based on natural environments; thus, it remains unclear whether there is such a relationship in an engineered ecosystem. The present study shows that there is a very weak distance-decay relationship in an engineered ecosystem (WWTPs) at the regional-to-continental scale. This study makes fundamental contributions to a mechanistic, predictive understanding of microbial biogeography.

Project description:Marine microbial communities are complex and dynamic, and their ecology impacts biogeochemical cycles in pelagic ecosystems. Yet, little is known about the relative activities of different microbial populations within genetically diverse communities. We used rRNA as a proxy for activity to quantify the relative specific activities (rRNA/ribosomal DNA [rDNA or rRNA genes]) of the eubacterial populations and to identify locations or clades for which there are uncouplings between specific activity and abundance. After analyzing 1.6 million sequences from 16S rDNA and rRNA (cDNA) libraries from two euphotic depths from a representative site in the Pacific Ocean, we show that although there is an overall positive relationship between the abundances (rDNAs) and activities (rRNAs) among populations of the bacterial community, for some populations these measures are uncoupled. Different ecological strategies are exemplified by the two numerically dominant clades at this site: the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is abundant but disproportionately more active, while the heterotrophic SAR11 is abundant but less active. Other rare populations, such as Alteromonas, have high specific activities in spite of their low abundances, suggesting intense population regulation. More detailed analyses using a complementary quantitative PCR (qPCR)-based approach of measuring relative specific activity for Prochlorococcus populations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans also show that specific activity, but not abundance, reflects the key drivers of light and nutrients in this system; our results also suggest substantial top-down regulation (e.g., grazing, viruses, or organismal interactions) or transport (e.g., mixing, immigration, or emigration) of these populations. Thus, we show here that abundance and specific activity can be uncoupled in open ocean systems and that describing both is critical to characterizing microbial communities and predicting marine ecosystem functioning and responses to change.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Planktonic bacteria are recognized as important drivers of biogeochemical processes in all aquatic ecosystems, however, the taxa that make up these communities are poorly known. The aim of this study was to investigate bacterial communities in aquatic ecosystems at Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a preserved insular environment of the Atlantic rain forest and how they correlate with a salinity gradient going from terrestrial aquatic habitats to the coastal Atlantic Ocean. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We analyzed chemical and microbiological parameters of water samples and constructed 16S rRNA gene libraries of free living bacteria obtained at three marine (two coastal and one offshore) and three freshwater (water spring, river, and mangrove) environments. A total of 836 sequences were analyzed by MOTHUR, yielding 269 freshwater and 219 marine operational taxonomic units (OTUs) grouped at 97% stringency. Richness and diversity indexes indicated that freshwater environments were the most diverse, especially the water spring. The main bacterial group in freshwater environments was Betaproteobacteria (43.5%), whereas Cyanobacteria (30.5%), Alphaproteobacteria (25.5%), and Gammaproteobacteria (26.3%) dominated the marine ones. Venn diagram showed no overlap between marine and freshwater OTUs at 97% stringency. LIBSHUFF statistics and PCA analysis revealed marked differences between the freshwater and marine libraries suggesting the importance of salinity as a driver of community composition in this habitat. The phylogenetic analysis of marine and freshwater libraries showed that the differences in community composition are consistent. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data supports the notion that a divergent evolutionary scenario is driving community composition in the studied habitats. This work also improves the comprehension of microbial community dynamics in tropical waters and how they are structured in relation to physicochemical parameters. Furthermore, this paper reveals for the first time the pristine bacterioplankton communities in a tropical island at the South Atlantic Ocean.

Dataset Information

Bacterioplankton Biogeography of the Atlantic Ocean: A Case Study of the Distance-Decay Relationship.

Publications

Bacterioplankton Biogeography of the Atlantic Ocean: A Case Study of the Distance-Decay Relationship.

Similar Datasets

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