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Distribution, Community Composition, and Potential Metabolic Activity of Bacterioplankton in an Urbanized Mediterranean Sea Coastal Zone
- Source :
- Applied and environmental microbiology. 83(17)
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- Bacterioplankton are fundamental components of marine ecosystems and influence the entire biosphere by contributing to the global biogeochemical cycles of key elements. Yet, there is a significant gap in knowledge about their diversity and specific activities, as well as environmental factors that shape their community composition and function. Here, the distribution and diversity of surface bacterioplankton along the coastline of the Gulf of Naples (GON; Italy) were investigated using flow cytometry coupled with high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Heterotrophic bacteria numerically dominated the bacterioplankton and comprised mainly Alphaproteobacteria , Gammaproteobacteria , and Bacteroidetes . Distinct communities occupied river-influenced, coastal, and offshore sites, as indicated by Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, distance metric (UniFrac), linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe), and multivariate analyses. The heterogeneity in diversity and community composition was mainly due to salinity and changes in environmental conditions across sites, as defined by nutrient and chlorophyll a concentrations. Bacterioplankton communities were composed of a few dominant taxa and a large proportion (92%) of rare taxa (here defined as operational taxonomic units [OTUs] accounting for IMPORTANCE The study of bacterioplankton in coastal zones is of critical importance, considering that these areas are highly productive and anthropogenically impacted. Their richness and evenness, as well as their potential activity, are very important to assess ecosystem health and functioning. Here, we investigated bacterial distribution, community composition, and potential metabolic activity in the GON, which is an ideal test site due to its heterogeneous environment characterized by a complex hydrodynamics and terrestrial inputs of varied quantities and quality. Our study demonstrates that bacterioplankton communities in this region are highly diverse and strongly regulated by a combination of different environmental factors leading to their heterogeneous distribution, with the rare taxa contributing to a major proportion of diversity and shifts in community composition and potentially holding a key role in ecosystem functioning.
- Subjects :
- Bacterioplankton
0301 basic medicine
Chlorophyll
030106 microbiology
Biodiversity
Biology
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Microbial Ecology
Gulf of Naples
03 medical and health sciences
Settore BIO/13 - Biologia Applicata
Abundance (ecology)
Mediterranean Sea
16S rRNA gene and rRNA
Ecosystem
Seawater
14. Life underwater
Ecosystem diversity
Phylogeny
Illumina sequencing
Potential metabolic activity
Bacteria
Biotechnology
Food Science
Ecology
QH
Chlorophyll A
fungi
15. Life on land
QR
UniFrac
030104 developmental biology
Species evenness
Species richness
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10985336 and 00992240
- Volume :
- 83
- Issue :
- 17
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Applied and environmental microbiology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3df486004841ecedada20a3d98c9a672